Gangwon-do Adventures

Gangwon-do in Korea is the most rural, rugged, and most mountainous of South Korea's nine main -dos. Highlights of Gangwon-do include: Seoraksan National Park, mainland South Korea's tallest mountain; Pyeongchang, South Korea's 2018 Winter Olympic bid; and the home of Dokdo, the contested islets off the coast. Here's it's location in relation to Daegu:

It's the pink one, guys.

This past weekend, I took the trip up to Daejeon to meet my roommate from orientation who I hadn't seen in over a year. Since last I saw him, he had upgraded to a university job as well as gotten a car. This latter fact enabled us to explore the otherwise mysterious Gangwon-do in ways that is difficult without a jalopy in which to do it. Indeed, I had never been to Gangwon-do before this past weekend.

ROAD TRIP!!!! That's right. We took a several hour road trip to the East coast. You may not think it would take this long, but it took four hours to get to the East coast. Yeah, it's that mountainous over there. However, it is also beautiful. On our way we passed aforementioned Pyeongchang, the Winter Olympic hopeful. Upon seeing it, I could only think how much infrastructure they would have to invest in to make it Olympic worthy. It can't have a population of more than 20,000. Nonetheless, it had a sleepy Alpine feel to it as we passed. I can only imagine that that infrastructure would drown out the quaint sleepiness of it and actually put it on the map. It could even ruin Gangwon-do. Or...they'll host most of it in neighboring Gyeonggi-do where all of Seoul's influence lies and have only the skiing part in Pyeongchang. Who knows?

As we snaked down the coast admiring rolling mountains that spilled into the ocean, we came upon our first destination: The Reunification Park. This is, of course, referred to Korean reunification. It was fairly dinky with a few Korean War planes and...South Korean Air Force One from the 60s. As you were allowed inside, we got to see where da prezident once sat.

What was more alluring about the park was that down the road there were three naval displays. The first was a Korean war ship that was built by the U.S. in 1945 and then donated to South Korea in the 60s.

"Did you get your tickets?" "What tickets?" "To the gun show!"

Granted, it wasn't as exciting as the U.S.S. Missouri, but it was still kind of neat. Second, we had the small dinghy that the 2009 North Korean defectors used to paddle their way across the border.

How'd you like to live on that for a couple of days?

The last was easily the most alluring. A North Korean submarine. A real one. So, turns out in 1996, a North Korean submarine shored up on Gangwon-do to release some spies to do some spying and hopefully assassinate some VIPs attending some function in the area. On the way out (assassination mission failed), their submarine got stuck on some rocks, so the 13 agents abandoned ship after shooting the submarine crew and burning all their documents. 12 agents were subsequently killed in a firefight and one was captured alive, giving us the information we have. The submarine was subsequently made into a little museum to North Korean aggression.

The results of two starkly contrasting economic systems in one picture.

The inside of the submersible actually wasn't that exciting, but it was still worth it to see (and you had to wear a hard hat to go inside because it's as treacherous as the North Korean regime!).

We snaked down the coast some more, still taking in those rolling mountains that spilled into the ocean, and eventually came upon a landmark sight. In a sleepy beach town there lies this:
A cruise ship on a hill. "Why is there a cruise ship on a hill?" you may ask. Nobody fucking knows. I'm just kidding. It's a hotel that was built into the shape of a cruise ship. From what I hear, it's actually a pretty nice hotel (not surprisingly). The only problem is, what else is there to see in this town? Well, there is a nice beach and the added bonus of our next destination: Haesindang Park.

Haesindang Park was created under the belief that it would satisfy the spirit of a young woman who drowned in the area. After she drowned, the amount of seafood gathered in the area plummeted, so they built a park to satisfy her. Since then, the seafood yield returned to normal. This is no normal park, although it has wonderful rocky beaches. No, this park is full of giant, erect penis statues.

Not pictured: the giant, erect penis statues.

It seems Korea has an obsession with genitalia between this park and Loveland on Jeju-do. What could it be? Probably a vein attempt at getting their birth numbers back up. Either way, it makes a pretty bizarre, yet entertaining adventure for the occasional Westerner who passes through.

That night we stayed in Samcheok, in the southern part of Gangwan-do. They have some sort of specialization in seafood, so we tried blisteringly spicy grilled eel that was actually not bad despite its blistering level of spice.

The morning consisted of the mostly uneventful drive back. All in all, one of the more eventful weekends I've had in a while.