I really picked a nice place to stay in Mallipo and what was especially interesting to me was the keen interest the owners of the Pinocchio Pension [EXPIRED LINK REMOVED:
https://www.pinocchiopension.com/] have in former Korean President Park Chung Hee.
In the cafe, they’ve displayed every issue of the quarterly newsletter published by the 박정희대통령기념사업회 (President Park Chung Hee Memorial Association)[EXPIRED LINK REMOVED: https://www.parkchunghee.co.kr/], which discusses how great the president was, as well as other memorabilia and a bust of the president. Having just finished a (very long!) book about President Park (The Park Chung Hee Era: The Transformation of South Korea), I was interested in these materials and spent some time scanning through them.
I am continously reminded what an impact President Park had on Korea and how to understand the Korea of today, we really have to understand his era of leading the country.