By Andrew Belet — Rattling Chains Staff

As noted in previous posts, my ability to play disc golf in South Korea is based solely on Facebook groups “Disc Golfers of Korea,” “Daegu Disc Golf,” and the “KPDGA Official Page.”

It was through these channels that I met up with a crew to play Beacon Hill, which led to my first ace in a foreign country. I made even more friends through it, too.  I was lucky enough to have three of those friends make a long journey up to play my new course, the Dragons Lair, which now has tone poles.

Jessica and Connor took a bus from another military base down near Seoul, and James came all the up from Daegu via car. That’s about a six hour-drive, and only if the traffic is good. I’m extremely humbled and honored that they would come all that way just to play a nine-hole course. It also shows the dedication of the disc golf community here in Korea.

That being said, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous. Until now, the only people who have played the Dragon’s Lair are my fellow soldiers. Most of them are inexperienced disc golfers, and the ones who do have “the love of the game” are just glad to have somewhere to play.

Would my course hold up to the scrutiny of other DGers who have played all over the world?

James has played every course in South Korea and had a hand in designing or raising funds for at least half of them. Luckily for me, disc golfers tend to be a pretty chill bunch. I’m mostly hoping for honest, open feedback so I can make the course even better.

Continue reading →

As I said in my last travelogue, while South Korea is small as countries go, it can still be difficult and time-consuming to travel anywhere. This is largely relegated to the Seoul area.

Get anywhere near Seoul, and you will find yourself with a serious travel headache, unless you grew up in Asia, mostly because of the sheer density of the population.

About 90 percent of South Koreans live in Seoul. That’s not around Seoul, or the greater area of Seoul, that’s in Seoul. Pretty wild, no?

Now, being as far north as I am, and seeing as how we are somewhat restricted in our freedom of travel, I quickly deduced that making 3- to 8-hour round trip to play disc golf every weekend wasn’t going to work. I’d end up broke or insane, or perhaps both.

So this left me with one logical solution — build my own course!

Luckily, my barracks are in a rather nice part of the base known as “Dragon Valley,” and I figured I could pretty easily cram a 9-hole course in with no problem. I began scouting the area while I did morning physical training and, with the aid of Google Earth, came up with a delightfully challenging layout.

The course layout.

That was the easy part.

The next step would be the real kicker — cutting through the red tape and actually getting permission to build the course. This turned out to be a bit more difficult than I thought. My first stop was at Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) for a meeting about getting a few bucks to install baskets and signs, and for them to help me get permission to use the land.

Three minutes into our meeting I was duly informed that, thanks to sequestration and severe budget cuts, they wouldn’t be able to supply me with anything. In fact, they were so short-staffed they couldn’t even go with me to meet the higher-ups for permission to use the land.

They tried their best to help though, making a few phone calls on my behalf and sending me on the way to meet the people I needed to meet. But, for now, this course was going to be built with my blood, sweat, tears, and, perhaps most importantly, my money.

Continue reading →