The weather for the festival was nice and sunny - warmer than I expected it to be, hence I was wearing a sweatshirt, down vest, and capri pants.  Ras, Melvin, and I went to pick up Na-kyung at work around 1:00 pm, then drove to Yangyang to make our 2:00 pm reservation.

We got there at 1:30 pm, parked, paid our ticket fee, and got a pair of gloves.  Dustin was in Jeju the day before, and was rushing over to Yangyang too, as well as Kiran, who practically arrived minutes before we jumped into the river for fish.  The part of the river we were at wasn't deep at all - only up to my knees.  This was an event that I wanted to take pictures of, but hesitated because I'd actually be running around in the water with my digital camera.  After struggling with the idea, I decided to take the risk and put the camera in my pocket.  We all squated by the riverbank, not really knowing what we were waiting for.  All of a sudden, a whistle blew and everyone started running into the water, as if they were being chased from some unknown force from behind.  I was in the middle of carefully rolling up my sleeve, but quickly forgot about it as I raced after the people in front of me.  I was a prime example of someone following the masses blindly, but it sure was fun.

The playing field

The players: Na-kyung, me, Melvin, Dustin, Ras, Christa, and Kiran

I knew that running after fish in the river was NOT going to be easy, but it was my first time, so i didn't know the trick, at first.  I was standing in the middle of the river, watching fish swim under my legs, and try to grab it, two seconds too late.  It would have almost looked like some 3 Stooges episode, where Curly lunges for the fish, only to trip and completey fall in the water, face down.  Then I noticed that a lot of people were near the nets, where the salmon seem to head, in order to get away from all the people trying to catch them.  That's where I made my catch.  By that time, half of the people in the river had already caught something, and were rushing back to their families to show off their catch.  By the end, we were the last ones hanging around, admiring our catch.  Dustin had the best looking salmon, while Christa's was the biggest and still had eggs coming out of the fish.  Mine was pretty big, and had large sacs of eggs that I later found out about when we cut it up. 

Eggs from Christa's fish

Kiran and Raswan being filmed by an MBC camera crew, who tried to get a re-inactment of them catching their fish.

Afterwards, newspapers were trying to get pictures of us.  Well... they were trying to take pictures of the white foreigner: Ras, Christa, and Kiran.  Melvin and I snuck into the pictures too, and I actually made a couple of newspapers.  Different versions of our group picture were in the Kangwon Ilbo, Kangwon-do Min Ilbo, and the Dong-a Ilbo.