Korean reading — TOPIK II · Weather

Toward the end of summer, a forecast said a big typhoon was coming up from the southern sea.

In Korea, typhoons mostly arrive between July and September, bringing strong winds and heavy rain.

That evening, the head of a small fishing village came back from a meeting at the county office and gathered the residents at the village hall.

Grandma Sunja, sitting in the front row, asked, “So, by when did the county office say we should tie up the boats?”

The village head relayed that they had proposed tying every boat firmly in the harbor by noon tomorrow and not going out to sea.

The residents worked late into the night putting away anything the wind could blow away and checking their roofs and windows.

Two days later the typhoon passed with fierce wind and rain, but the village suffered no major damage.

Saying everyone was safe thanks to preparing in advance, Grandma held the village head's hand tightly.

This January, I climbed a snow-covered mountain with my friend Junseo.

It was about minus three degrees at the foot of the mountain, so we felt it wasn't as cold as we had expected.

But on a mountain, the temperature usually drops about 0.6 degrees for every hundred meters you climb.

On top of that, once we reached the ridge, the strong wind made it feel much colder.

An old man we met in front of the shelter told us, “The ranger says you must put on crampons from here on.”

We put on our crampons and thick gloves, then walked slowly along the slippery trail.

At the summit our fingers felt like they would freeze, so we took just a few photos and came right back down.

Since that day, when I go to a mountain in winter, I don't judge by the temperature at the bottom alone.

During the school break, Doyun, an elementary school student, stayed at his grandfather's house in the countryside.

One day, just after sunset, a single unusually bright star shone in the western sky.

His grandfather told him that people long ago called that star Gaebapbaragi.

It got that name because it appears around the time a dog waits for its dinner.

Then, turning to Grandma beside him, he added, “Dear, according to the teacher at the observatory, that's not a star but a planet called Venus.”

Venus looks brighter than anything except the sun and the moon, and in the dawn sky it is also called Saetbyeol, the morning star.

Doyun was amazed to learn that the evening star and the morning star are the same Venus.

After that, every evening Doyun went out to the yard with his grandfather to look for Venus.

When late June came, my grandfather began listening closely to the weather forecast on the radio.

In Korea, from around this time, the rainy season called jangma usually lasts about a month, with frequent rain.

The rainy front usually starts on Jeju Island and moves up through the southern regions to the central regions.

One morning, Grandpa said to Grandma, “Honey, the radio says the rainy season starts this weekend.”

So before Saturday came, we hurried to harvest the peppers and lettuce from the vegetable garden.

We also cleared the dirt and leaves piled up in the drains and dried the blankets, which easily get damp, thoroughly in the sun.

Just as forecast, rain poured down from the weekend, and for several days afterward the sun was hard to see.

Thanks to preparing in advance, my grandparents' house got through the long rainy season without any trouble.

News that there would be a total lunar eclipse that night was posted in my university astronomy club's group chat.

In the evening, my roommate Haeun passed on a message: “Minjae asked if you're going to see the eclipse tonight too.”

I replied right away that I would go, grabbed a thick coat, and went up to the school rooftop.

A lunar eclipse happens when the Earth comes between the sun and the moon and its shadow covers the moon.

Even though the moon was completely covered, it didn't vanish but looked a reddish copper color, and everyone gasped in awe.

Minjae explained that it's because red light, bent as it passes through Earth's atmosphere, reaches into the shadow.

Unlike a solar eclipse, a lunar eclipse is safe to watch with the naked eye, so even people without telescopes could enjoy it comfortably.

The red moon I saw from the rooftop that night became the most memorable scene of my university life.

One summer afternoon, after a heavy shower passed, a huge rainbow appeared in the eastern sky.

My younger brother Hajun, having finished a phone call with Grandma, stared out the window for a long time.

When I asked, “Did Grandma ask you why rainbows form?”, my brother nodded.

So I explained that sunlight bends and reflects inside tiny water droplets in the air and splits into many colors.

I also told him that a rainbow always forms on the side opposite the sun, so you have to stand with your back to the sun to see it.

My brother quickly realized that since it was afternoon, the sun was in the west and the rainbow had appeared in the east.

Hajun called Grandma back and excitedly explained what he had just learned.

Grandma laughed loudly over the phone, saying her grandson had become quite the teacher.

Last winter I lived in a small town in northern Finland as an exchange student.

That place, near the Arctic Circle, had only a few hours of daylight once December came.

One day my younger sister Yerin, back in Korea, said on the phone, “Mom asked if the days there are really that short.”

I answered that the short days were a pity, but in exchange I could see the aurora in the long night sky.

An aurora is a phenomenon in which electrically charged particles from the sun collide with the air in the polar sky and give off light.

That night, a green aurora swayed like a curtain across the sky.

Forgetting the below-freezing cold, I filmed it and sent the video to my family.

The next day, Mom replied that she had been worried about the short days, but now she only felt envious.

During spring break, our family went to Jindo to see the sea part.

Mainly because of the moon's pull, seawater comes in and goes out about twice a day.

On days when the water goes out especially far, a wide sandy path appears between the islands.

People put on rubber boots and walked along the path, some of them picking up clams.

Then Mom, who had stayed on the beach, called my younger sister Seojin, who was walking ahead.

When the call ended, Dad asked, “Did Mom ask you whether the water beside the path is already deep?”

When Seojin said yes, Dad looked at both sides of the path and said we should hurry back before the water rose again.

Not long after we reached the shore, the path disappeared back into the sea.

As a child, I was the kind of kid who stared at the sky every day in winter, wondering when the first snow would come.

Seeing me like that, my grandfather, who lives in a mountain village, made me a fun promise over the phone.

He said that since the first snow comes earlier in the mountains than in the city, he would call me first thing when it snowed.

The higher the place, the lower the temperature, so the first snow tends to fall earlier in mountain villages than in cities.

Early one morning at the end of October that year, my grandfather really did call to say it was snowing.

He held his phone out the window, saying he'd let me hear the snow falling, and laughed for a long time.

In our neighborhood, the first snow didn't fall until about a month after that.

Even now, every year as autumn deepens, I wait for my grandfather's first-snow call.

During his summer vacation, Taemin set out alone on a hike along the ridge of a high mountain.

In the afternoon, huge dark clouds towered up in the sky, and lightning flashed in the distance.

Light is much faster than sound, so thunder is heard a few seconds after the lightning is seen.

If it takes about three seconds from the flash until the thunder, the lightning struck about one kilometer away.

When Taemin counted, the gap was getting shorter and shorter.

When he reached the shelter, the elderly keeper asked, “With thunder this close, do you still intend to go up to the summit?”

The keeper said that if you can hear thunder, you are already within striking distance, and told him to stay off the ridge and away from big trees.

Taemin gave up on the summit and waited inside the shelter for the storm to pass.

A solar eclipse is a phenomenon in which the moon passes between the sun and the Earth and blocks the sun.

On the day of a partial solar eclipse, Mr. Jeongwoo, a science teacher, gathered his students in the schoolyard.

The notice the teacher had put up at the schoolyard entrance read, “Who would stare at the sun with the naked eye for long? Yet on an eclipse day, curiosity easily wins out.”

The teacher warned that even when the sun is partly covered, its light is still strong enough to hurt your eyes.

Ordinary sunglasses can't protect your eyes, so the students took turns looking at the sky through special eclipse glasses.

Students without glasses poked a small hole in a sheet of paper and observed the image of the sun cast on the ground.

On the ground, the sun showed clearly, one side hidden so that it looked like a crescent moon.

That day the students learned that you can only truly enjoy an amazing phenomenon when you know how to watch it safely.

Last autumn, my husband and I left home at dawn to visit a friend who lives by a river.

As we neared the river, thick fog set in and we could barely see the car right in front of us.

Fog forms when, on a clear, windless night, the air near the ground cools and water vapor condenses into tiny droplets.

Areas around rivers and lakes in particular have a lot of water vapor, so fog often forms there on autumn mornings.

We turned on our hazard lights and drove slowly, but ended up missing a fork in the road and wandering around for a long time.

My husband lamented that it would have been better if we had left just an hour earlier.

I laughed and said, “Even if we had set out earlier, could we have avoided this fog?”

Once the sun rose and the temperature went up, the fog lifted as if by magic, and we arrived safely at our friend's house.

My grandfather often told me about seeing Halley's Comet in the night sky when he was young.

Halley's Comet orbits the sun and comes near the Earth about once every seventy-six years.

The last time it came close to Earth was in 1986, and the next time will be around 2061.

A comet is made of ice and dust, so when it nears the sun, gas and dust stream out of it and form a long tail.

Grandfather said the tail was fainter than he had expected, but it was a sight he would never forget.

After my grandfather passed away, I made up my mind that I would see that comet with my own eyes when it returns.

By then, I will probably be an old person with white hair, just like my grandfather.

Still, when I think of the day I will tell this story to my grandchildren, my heart already flutters.

Eunseo, a fourth grader, bought a notebook for observing the weather on the first day of the new semester.

On the first page of the notebook, Eunseo wrote in big letters her resolution to observe the sky at the same time every day.

For the first few days, all she did was draw the shapes of the clouds.

But as her records piled up, she realized that the weather that followed changed depending on the shape of the clouds.

Days with cotton-ball clouds were mostly clear, but dark clouds towering high brought showers.

Also, on the day after a ring formed around the sun, it often rained.

At the end of the semester, Eunseo entered the school science presentation contest with this notebook and was praised.

Eunseo learned that if you keep records consistently, you can find patterns even in an ordinary sky.

In Korea there is an expression, cheongomabi, meaning “the sky is high and the horses grow fat.”

My grandmother also used to say, “Is there any season whose sky isn't lovely? Still, nothing beats the autumn sky.”

The sky is blue because, when sunlight passes through the air, blue light is scattered more than other light.

In summer, however, there is a lot of water vapor in the air, so there are many days when the sky looks hazy.

When autumn comes, cool, dry air moves in, and the water vapor and dust in the air decrease.

That's why you can see clearly into the distance and the blue of the sky looks deeper and richer.

On days like this, it's nice to go out to a nearby park and look up at the sky for a moment.

I hope that even in our busy daily lives, we don't miss the gifts each season brings.

My daughter Sohee, who is studying in Japan, experienced an earthquake for the first time last week.

Fortunately no one was badly hurt, but when I heard the news, my heart pounded for a while.

The next day, an elderly neighbor I met in front of our apartment building asked, “Oh my, did your daughter say it shook a lot where she is?”

I told her it had shaken hard enough to knock a cup off the desk, but my daughter had moved calmly, just as she had been taught.

While it was shaking, Sohee got under a sturdy table and covered her head with a cushion.

And after the shaking stopped, she took the stairs instead of the elevator and went out to an open lot outside the building.

My neighbor said Korea isn't completely free of earthquakes either and suggested we learn what to do in advance.

That evening, together with my family, I checked which table in our home was the sturdiest and where we would evacuate to.