Construction On My Hiking Trail!

An interesting thing that has happened lately on my hiking trail is the government has built several new bridges.  There were a few places where hikers had to walk across large rocks to get along the trail, but have now been replaced with bridges.  I actually enjoyed that part of the trail quite a bit (unless of course there had just been tons of rain and the water was raging), but the bridges are actually quite nice.  During the construction there were some interesting trips for Mr. Park and I, where we found ourselves really hiking on our lunch break.

Here is a shot of the workers carrying the beams along the trail.

Here they are taking a short break.

As you can see, this is a pretty serious looking bridge!  Not just a dropping a tree trunk across the creek kinda thing.

Here you can see some of the building supplies that they had ready for use.  Also one of the preexisting bridges where a nice stream was running under.  

Here is a nearly finished bridge.

On the right is the way that we were supposed to go while the construction was going on.  For some of them it was quite challenging to navigate.  

 Two of the finished bridges (and Mr. Park).

These bridges are nice, but for me.. they were unnecessary additions to our trail.  The only reason I point that out, is because Mr. Park and I have been talking quite a bit of politics lately (on the same side of the coin, fortunately), and this is relevant to the issue of government spending.  Now you don't have to be very involved in politics to recognize when tax dollars are being misallocated.  This isn't the worst of those occurrences (even thought it was quite an expensive project when you think about all of the labor costs), but I have learn about many other instances where the government here has spent tax dollars for.. their own agendas.  I don't feel like I have enough information to really cite specifics, but from what I understand there is a certain amount of bribery and corruption going on here, that is disappointing to learn about.  One of the major ones Mr. Park has talked about is the "4 Major Rivers" project that involved building dams on the 4 biggest rivers in and around Seoul.  When I Googled it there was not a lot of information on it in a negative light, but Korea (again according to my source) does control its media outlets pretty strictly.  Wikipedia for example mentions some of the negative things I heard, but it focused much more on the positives of the project.  Mr. Park says it was a complete failure, and waste of money.  Also many of the current President's friends and family members made tons of money off of this project from buying land along the river, then selling it to the government at a very high rate.  I would love to look further into these kinds of issues, and if I do I will report back!