A couple of weeks ago I took some pictures of the misty mountain of Munsu. Today, the mountain looks similar from down here in the valley, but that ain’t no mist. Neither is it fog or smog. The Koreans call it a “Hwang Sa” or “황사” if you set your browser to show Korean fonts.

The haze you see in these pictures is courtesy of the Great Gobi Desert in Northern China and Mongolia. Every spring the desert throws up a curtain of fine dust. Some years it isn’t too bad. The spring of 2005 it was barely noticeable,  but this year it’s pretty intense.

When I took these pictures, it was only about 5:30pm on Sunday. Normally still nice and  bright for a spring evening. But the bus has its lights on and the traffic lights would be barely visble if they weren’t on. Many of the people in Cheonsang outside are wearing masks. I walked to the store with my T-shirt over my nose. No one looked twice, pointed fingers or made fun of me. Other than a short trip for groceries and to take her home later in the evening, MyeongHee and I stayed indoors all day and watched movies. It was eerily quiet for a Sunday as everyone else seemed to be staying indoors unless they absolutely had to get out. The dust is very fine and can cause some nasty respiratory problems if you breath in too much of the stuff. On the news, the pictures from Seoul were far worse. They have about 50% more of the dust in the air than we do. Near the North Korean border, it’s twice the density of here.

Just for fun, here’s a picture from May of 2004 when I first moved into this apartment. The air is significantly clearer and the peak of Munsu is plainly visible behind the foothill in the foreground.