Winter in Korea

Winter was a pretty cold and snow time in Korea. Records were set for the coldest temperatures, the longest periods of cold temperatures, and for snowfall. Despite the cold temperatures, I was able to take a couple of fun trips to various parts of Korea.

The first trip I went on was a hiking trip to Halasan Mountain which is the tallest mountain in Korea and located on Jeju island, south of the Korea peninsula. We took a bus down to Busan and stayed the day there, collecting some hiking supplies since the mountain was completely covered with snow. After buying 30 sets of crampons for the hiking crew, we then took an overnight ferry to the island. We started hiking right away in the morning. It had just snowed an inch or so, making the hike absolutely breathtaking.

I didn't have the appropriate footwear but I found the a set of good tennis shoes, a couple of toe warmers, and a set of crampons make an amazing set of winter hiking footwear!! We hiked to the top of the mountain, which was unbelievable windy, and then hiked down the other side.

I was with a group that finished the hike a few hours early so we took a cab into the town and saw the Jeju natural history museum. We also visited a Jimjibang (bathhouse) to clean up and relax a bit before boarding the ferry that took us all the way up to Seoul. It was a really great weekend that included some great hiking.

The second trip I did was a weekend trip to Seokcho with a few friends from school. Seokcho is located directly east of Seoul, on the coast of the Sea of Japan, or the East Sea if you are Korean. We took a bus over after work and stayed at a great hostel. It was kind of an overcast and cold weekend but we still had a great time. Seokcho was a pretty sleepy town being that it was the middle of the winter. It is the city that has the entrance to Seoraksan National Park, which is one of the more beautiful areas in Korea.

We spent a day in the park, not doing any of the hiking, but lounging by the river and taking the cable car up to one of the many peaks in the park. The top of the peak was believably windy and we quite literaly were fearing for our lives as we were being blown around by the wind on the tip top of the peak. That night we visited a great jimjabang to warm up and relax a bit. That night I got a phone call from my mom, saying that a huge earthquake hit Chile and that the whole pacific coastline was on aleart for Tsunamis. Being that we could see the ocean from our hostel window, we were a bit nervous but never saw/hear anything on the news channels so we figured we were OK. We did wake up to a full on blizzard the next morning. We made our way to the bus station and spend nearly 5 hours on the bus home, which should have been a 2 hour ride. it was a bit long, but we made it safely back to Seoul.

The rest of the winter in Seoul was basically just cold and snowy. I invested in a lot of warm winter clothing and found lots of great restaurants to eat in throughout the winter. Kept busy by hanging out with friends and eating a lot of great food!