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Korean Nature (Snakes specifically)
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sunnyvale



Joined: 17 Jul 2006
Location: Korea

PostPosted: Sun Jul 18, 2010 5:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hey,

I saw a snake on Cheonggyesan in Seoul about a month ago. Greenish brown color.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheonggyesan_(Seoul)
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iwillteachyouenglish



Joined: 07 Jul 2010

PostPosted: Sun Jul 18, 2010 11:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks and keep em coming everyone! This is exactly the kind of information I need to get started documenting the snakes of Korea.
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morrisonhotel



Joined: 18 Jul 2009
Location: Gyeonggi-do

PostPosted: Sun Jul 18, 2010 5:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I live right out in the boonies. I'm surrounded by forest on three sides. I see snakes maybe once a fortnight (usually tiny little things). Usually see a snake that's been run over once a week or so.
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captain kirk



Joined: 29 Jan 2003

PostPosted: Sun Aug 29, 2010 5:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Horangibem (tigersnake) is non-poisonous, the equivalent of a Canadian garter snake (though they don't look the same). They live on paddies and eat the frogs and insects there. Farmers are against snakes and kill them with a hoe, probably only the vipers though.

In Cholla I came across some Korean men who'd stopped their car to tease a snake that reared and had a flange either side of its head which became a hood when pissed off. A Korean woman sat in the car, scared or disgusted. The men teased it with sticks. It was about five feet long. I'm not sure the name of it but it looked and behaved like a viper. Returning along that road I found the snake dead; perhaps they had killed it (likely). Black back with an orange belly. Only time I saw one like that.

I asked kids about snakes at this time (middle school hagwon 'free talking', two guys) and they said that it was more common in previous years to catch snakes to sell to make snake wine. A kind of net set up that allowed snakes to go in (like a corral) but not out. Some days later the snake-trapper collects all the snakes. It was a panel net/web set up like a set of walls about a foot high, all connected. Not sure how the snakes got in but they sure couldn't get out.

I'm more familiar with, and have seen more of, the vipers around Chirisan and (you were asking about locating yourself to live and work in a snake populated area) saw them on the mountain roads as either roadkill or living. The camo leaf pattern would be more green on some, more gray on others. Chirisan also had a kind of wildcat (I saw as roadkill), which looks like a houscat with lynx pointed ears and leopard spots on a white chest and brown/black ticked-haired body colour.

I saw the same viper in the wooded mount-hills on Goje island. They coil into a cone/pyramid with the head nestled up top ready to spring remaining completely immobile, not even blinking. Very dangerous. Almost stepped on one coiled, almost sat too close beside one coiled. Both times it freaked me out. Their colour pattern is very effective camoflage, brown, black and grey. Like forest floor litter of dead leaves.

So yes, around Chirisan I saw the most snakes and I lived and worked all over Korea except for Kangwondo and Jeju. Specifically vipers, though. Which I later read is the most evolutionarily advanced snake, especially given a gland it uses for sensing, and its poison, a neurotoxin. Apparently some goretex hiking gaiters protect from their fangs but that would have to be a glancing strike. Straight in I'd imagine the fangs would puncture. Protective gear (against rattlers) is available by mail order from Texas. This same viper lives in Japan too. Mamushi. MISTER Mamushi the Yakuza snake.

Here's a thread found using the search function;

http://forums.eslcafe.com/korea/viewtopic.php?t=22721&start=0
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Crockpot2001



Joined: 01 Jul 2007

PostPosted: Sun Aug 29, 2010 1:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I often ride mountain bikes on the fire roads and trails on the small islands just North of the Airport island. I've seen 3 snakes there in my 5 or 6 visits.
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alwaysbeclosing100



Joined: 07 Feb 2009

PostPosted: Sun Aug 29, 2010 9:41 pm    Post subject: re Reply with quote

The valleys with rivers in southwest gangwondo near samcheok are good for bird watching.

I spent a year on the DMZ crawling through rice paddies and up and down mountains in all types of weather and never saw one single snake.
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captain kirk



Joined: 29 Jan 2003

PostPosted: Wed Sep 01, 2010 4:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Huh, the Korean rat snake is for sale in a U.S. petshop (!) probably captive bred.

http://www.reptmart.com/p-1034-korean-rat-snake-for-sale.aspx

Video in Korean; 'Owl versus Korean ratsnake'

www.maniacworld.com/Owl-vs-Korean-Ratsnake.html
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murmanjake



Joined: 21 Oct 2008

PostPosted: Thu Sep 02, 2010 2:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

captain kirk wrote:
Huh, the Korean rat snake is for sale in a U.S. petshop (!) probably captive bred.

http://www.reptmart.com/p-1034-korean-rat-snake-for-sale.aspx

Video in Korean; 'Owl versus Korean ratsnake'

www.maniacworld.com/Owl-vs-Korean-Ratsnake.html


Whoah that was rad.

Wish there was a bit less editing though. An epic battle.
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kardisa



Joined: 26 Jun 2009
Location: Masan

PostPosted: Thu Sep 02, 2010 3:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Are you set on Korea or would you be interested in other countries? Taiwan, for example, is a herpetologist's wet dream. To answer your original question though, I go hiking at least two or three times a week around Gwangju and I have not once seen a snake.
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Kurtz



Joined: 05 Jan 2007
Location: ples bilong me

PostPosted: Thu Sep 02, 2010 7:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've hiked all around Korea. I go hiking on average 4 times a week, and I've seen 5 snakes at most. I haven't seen much wildlife at all apart from some deer, birds and squirrel type creatures.

Back home in the summer, I've seen PLENTY and most are deadly.
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captain kirk



Joined: 29 Jan 2003

PostPosted: Fri Sep 03, 2010 7:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Off an established trail is where I've encountered snakes. It may be that an established trail makes for alot of noise, whereas walking off a trail on the springy, soft forest floor makes for less vibrations a snake can sense/hear. When you think about it a 200 lb person pounding along a hard, clay trail must make alot of noise to a snake which has picked up heightened senses evolving to be aware of the vibrations in the ground set up by mice and frogs hopping, its business, its prey. Also, walking on an established trail one is more disconnected from surroundings, like driving on a highway through forest. If there were a snake to be seen it would probably be the tip of the tail high-tailing it 'way over there'. Unless a person had the eyes of an owl or eagle that would be unseen. And an owl or eagle doesn't have to watch the uneven trail to ensure not twisting an ankle.
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flashpatch1



Joined: 01 Sep 2010
Location: Jincheon Korea

PostPosted: Sat Sep 18, 2010 2:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

We live around jincheon in a small village and have seen many snakes here in the trails around us. Most are the Flower snake and the siberian pit viper. Flower snake is blakish with a red spot and pretty harmless and the Pit viper looks like a small rattlesnale without the rattle.
Plenty of wildlife here Frogs and Toads and rats etc. Close to Nong Dari (bridge) but well away from jincheon Town.
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Lunar Groove Gardener



Joined: 05 Jan 2005
Location: 1987 Subaru

PostPosted: Sat Sep 18, 2010 3:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Last weekend I saw three snakes, each different.
All were road kill in the roads between rice fields.
The largest had a brown/green diamond design and
broad, triangular head; another was bright orange/red with
black checks; the third was quite slim with dark green and
black lines running its length. Lots of grassy land which
is farmed along the rivers in the countryside. I have not yet seen
any snakes in the mountains; as many have said, it seems
clear that the larger animals have almost all gone missing.
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captain kirk



Joined: 29 Jan 2003

PostPosted: Sat Sep 18, 2010 6:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Lunar Groove Gardener wrote:
Last weekend I saw three snakes, each different.
All were road kill in the roads between rice fields.
The largest had a brown/green diamond design and
broad, triangular head;

*Maybe Korean rat snake or Siberian pit viper?


another was bright orange/red with
black checks;

*Did it have an orange belly with red back that had black checks?

the third was quite slim with dark green and
black lines running its length.

*Maybe the Korean tiger snake?

Lots of grassy land which
is farmed along the rivers in the countryside. I have not yet seen
any snakes in the mountains; as many have said, it seems
clear that the larger animals have almost all gone missing.


Wild boar. I was driving home one evening and there was this brown barrel with legs, covered in brown fur, with a big pig head looking sideways at me, standing its ground. I was on the motorbike going quite fast and suddenly it went up the sheer steep roadverge thrashing through the vegetation. It was almost strait up, the roadside, and thick bushes. In that moment it was frozen looking at me on the road it looked very stocky, like a barrel. That was the ONE time in 11 years I saw a wild boar. The other time I just saw the waist high dry grass swaying as something straight-line dashed away, causing stocky commotion to the grass like a big barrel bowling ball was knocking the stalks like dominoes. Korean teachers said things about wild pigs, especially that they are dangerous and attack people. But I don't know about that. They also said that wild pigs are 'delicious'.

Ha, if you don't mind, I have another story about 'the wild pig'. Near Gumi (mountainous) I was going up this washed out steep track on a dirtbike. The track ended up at a sort of farm building with a corral for pigs that looked like wild pigs and domestic pigs mixed together. Some Korean guys were drinking soju and one (actually wild pig looking pig) was trussed and alive on the ground. They were about to butcher and eat it. And one guy said that the domestic pigs in the corral attract the boars at night and interbreeding occurs. So these fellows were up there (a dirt proper track for cars lead up the opposite side from the way I'd come) for some delicious barbeque. The pig/boar farmer was kind of a rough character, the looks of a dog farmer/butcher. And he was larger and more aggressive than the other men, perhaps from having grown up eating boar meat.
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Wishmaster



Joined: 06 Feb 2003

PostPosted: Wed Sep 22, 2010 2:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

They got lizards in Korea. I remember being surprised when I saw them. As far as snakes, just like another poster said, take a few snapshots of your hagwon director...they are all snakes.
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