(Near Wonju’s city hall in Musil-dong)
In effort to give more exposure to the articles that we have about the nooks and crannies of Korea and all things and subjects in between, we’re going to occasionally blog about Random Wiki pages. On the left side of the wiki, you can see on the menu, ‘random page’, which will basically choose to bring up any of our 9000+ pages. And we’ll try to expand on them in the blog, with images and things that might be of note for the expat perspective.
Today, the article is Musil-dong in Wonju dating back to when Skookum and Mithridates did a lot of work with Wonju and Gangwon-do articles. Although the article certainly is lacking in meat, its part of our foundation that will be covered over time, as we move forward to offering localized content to specific areas of Korea.
Personally, I’ve never been to Wonju, but came close to starting my first job there. When I was on the phone with Jamie, my Korean-American recruiter back in 2002, he was lining me up for either a Wonju or Daegu position. As I recall, the Wonju school didn’t want to provide airfare (WTF?), so they were obviously a small school who would prefer to have an illegal teacher who was already in country and willing to take such compromises. Fortunately, Jamie sent my resume to Rob down in Daegu, where everything just clicked and the love affair with the city, country, and culture blossomed. But I sometimes wonder how things would have went, if I ended up in Wonju. Living in Gangwon-do would be beautiful, but I’d have more leanings toward Gangneung and Sokcho, moreso anything inland. And you’d have to pretty much forget about making big bucks on privates, unlike Daegu.
But as with any place in Korea, there are Wonju expats who live there and swear up and down that they’ve found the place they want to be for XYZ years.
But as for Musil-dong, a Naver search reveals that it’s home to Wonju’s city hall. The area appears to have about 3-4 English hagwons big enough to be allowed to hire E2 teachers. There’s a Pizza Hut there, along with 2 Lotterias, a McDonald’s, and a Vietnamese place. 5 health clubs. An E-mart.The real nightlife action seems to on the northern part of the dong, around Wonju’s bus terminal, surrounded by bars, restaurants, PC bangs, noraebangs, etc…
In short, the dong has almost everything that a first-year teacher would need to adjust, which indicates that I probably could have pulled it off back when I had the (shitty) offer from the Wonju school.
