Our guide

This young woman was our guide on the hike at Bugaksan. Her name is Won Na (I'm sure that's not the correct spelling, but it approximates the pronunciation).

She was great--knowledgeable, personable, and fun to hike with. I overheard her telling another hiker that she had been in a Women's Studies program at a university in Seoul, so later I told her that I'd gotten my B.A. in WS, probably before she was born! Or maybe she was a toddler by then.

Anyway, she really won me over when she said that she doesn't go in for the "Barbie Doll" look and we joked that she may be the only female in Korea who doesn't wear pink hearts and flowers on all her clothes. (She was nice enough to let me take her picture to prove she exists.) Won Na said there are actually others like her and they joke among themselves that they're a secret society, but they have to keep a low profile because their other women friends give them a hard time about not looking feminine enough.

You can see she's beautiful, maybe even more so in her plain white t-shirt than she'd be in a doll outfit.