Performers take center stage during Chuseok, an annual three-day thanksgiving holiday. A harvest moon signals the start of the festival, celebrated with music, wrestling, dancing, and feasting. Koreans also honor their ancestors with a memorial service called charye.
Soldiers patrol the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), which has divided the two Koreas since the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War. Around two million troops are stationed along the 2.5-mile-wide (4-kilometer-wide) DMZ, but the zone is off limits to nearly all humans and remains largely untouched. Conservationists say it may be Korea’s greatest wildlife preserve.
Rows of golden Buddhas silently welcome visitors to a Korean temple. Buddha was born in India some 2,500 years ago, and his faith reached the Korean Peninsula in A.D. 372, by way of Chinese monks. Koreans, in turn, helped the faith take hold in Japan.