Jeonju hanok village day
Now I have seen the hanok village when it is open. In completing my tour I found out that as expected, it is new, with a lot of criticism that from 2007 onwards nearly everything historical was bulldozed and replaced with cafes and souvenir shops. Despite this, and get ready for this amazing claim - "The village was designated as an International Slow City in 2010 in recognition of its relaxed pace of life where traditional culture and nature blend harmoniously". Yes, they are proud of being a slow city. Hard R.
Even better than this, they are not satisfied to just be a slow city, they are the only slow city in the world where the surrounding city has a population greater than 600,000 people. Many signs proclaim this. If you are wondering about slow cities in general, my research tells me that we have 3 in Australia, Goolwa, Katoomba and Yea, all are tiny places and yeah I have been to all 3. And also "Cittaslow is an organisation founded in Italy and inspired by the slow food movement", their logo is a snail. So nothing to do with the usual list making body of UNESCO.
So there you go, that's all you need to know about slow cities.
The first site I thought would be historic. Hmmm. It is the royal portrait museum, but also there is a shrine. The shrine is being rebuilt.
An actual old building in between the newer ones, I think.
Through there is a historical shrine under construction.
There is some bamboo.
Here is the actual royal portrait museum, most of it is underground. I should mention that there is an entry fee of about $2.50.
The royal portraits seem to involve ms paint and projectors. Most of the actual portraits were drawn in about 2007 when the slow city movement started.
These wheelbarrows are re-creations of the actual wheelbarrows that were used to transport the real royal portraits, I think.
Back at the main street through the hanok village, and it is hot with bright sun today. I got burnt.
Nearby is a covered bridge, just like Madison county. You will see it again shortly.
Behold, I think it is new.
All the streets are nice and touristy.
This is the rather uninspiringly named, national intangible heritage centre. Mainly hanboks I believe.
If there is a hill to climb up, I will find it.
On top of the hill is something actually old, they ask you to take your shoes off if you want to walk on it, Omokdae appears to be it's name.
View of hanok roofing methods.
Not too busy yet even at lunch time, some cafes only open after lunch.
Most of the streets are full of air bnb's, apparently Jeonju is the 3rd most visited city in Korea after Seoul and Busan, all because of this snail certified area.
There are many places to get an ice cream.
All the streets are well manicured.
Just over the river is the heavily advertised, Seohakdong Art Village. This is a bit hard to photograph, but there are a lot of places selling hand made ear rings and related things tourists need.
My last stop of the day, the also nearby Nambu market. A strange mix of new and old. There were some rather modern cafes, and a youth zone.
But also the traditional Korean style market where leafy produce bakes in the sun next to pig heads.
Then I shot a few dogs and decided I had seen enough.
Jeonju central market
Having spent last night and today in the area of the hanok market, I was hanok'd out, until at least tomorrow night. Therefore tonight I headed in the opposite direction and discovered that there is not that much else going on.
First was city hall, which has air lifted a historic site into the middle of the building (see below), followed by a nearby market that was actually quite large. The best I can do to discover it's name is that is is the central market, or possibly clam market. Google translate argues with itself.
Eventually I ended up back in the normal hotel area shopping streets for some tofu soup, exciting indeed.
Back at my hotel, and a K league professional football (soccer) team is staying in the same hotel as me, their buses and vans in team colours are illegally parked blocking all hotel entrances. Anyway, the interesting thing is, they are a top league team, but it is the armed forces team. The team is all players from other professional teams who are currently doing their military service. Hmm.
A Homeplus. This is another version of Korean wal-mart, I wandered over thinking it looked a bit run down. Abandoned.
This is Jeonju city hall. Note the ancient historic temple shrine they have craned up into the middle of the building.
I headed to the market, which has a convenient drain for fish guts disposal.
The inside of the market was surprisingly spacious.
Spacious until they pile vegetables up the middle of where you are expected to walk.
The other night I mentioned movie street, this is it. The Jeonju film festival is heavily promoted. Golden footprints are placed around the area.
Next I wandered down to the river to find out if these rocks are slippery. They are not.
A mega church! Jesus! Pope!
And now that I was full of salvation, poor person tofu stew. It was adequate.
Tomorrow, hiking day, shorter hike again I think.
Godeoksan from Daesong-dong
I had plans to go to a mountain called Gyeonggaksan from a bus stop at Jowol village. I stood at the bus stop and waved as rural bus 201 approached, and it did not stop. The next one was in 4 hours. So that was the end of that. I had to find a new journey, which would now need to be a hike without a hiking trail map in the app that I use (alltrails in Korea).
I settled on Godeoksan, as it was close and the bus journey had non rural options both there and back from roughly where I was standing.
Then I got off the bus, and using Naver maps, had 3 paths to choose from to head up. I chose wrong. The path I had chosen took me to private property with a no entry sign. I entered anyway, and could not find a trail. So I had to double back, and eventually, I found the real trail. Persistence, I have a lot.
Stats time -
4 hours 57 minutes - all stats include the dead end false start
1,059m vertical ascent
1,687 calories burned - 27c today
16.46km
31,500 steps
Not too many photos today, most of the trail had no view.
Here is my bus stop. Well not the bus stop I originally planned, my replacement bus stop, last stop on route 110.
You have to separate rubbish into 10 different bins. Good luck. In Australia and the UK there is a riot currently over introducing a 3rd bin.
Hard waste collection, anyone want a Yamaha keyboard?
The wrong path lead me up through farm lands. Lots of dogs barking.
After doubling back at the dead end, here is where I found an actual trail. Well I still was not quite sure at this point, but if you are looking to do this hike, I guess, you need to find this area behind the bus stop.
Once I got to here, I knew it was the right trail. Almost looks like Autumn too.
As it turns out, this is a fortress wall, and so it is indeed the right trail. I made another brief detour to walk along the wall, but the trees were all too tall so there was no view.
Now I am finally heading in the correct direction.
This was the trail for nearly the whole hike. Shady, but no view.
As you can see.. it looked very similar for a lot of the way. Not too rocky.
First view. Jeonju is bigger than I thought.
That ridge is the direction I had come from.
Almost at the top. Blossom time.
The summit has a helicopter landing area, but almost no view due to the trees.
I think the peak 2/3 to the right of this photo was my original destination today, but I was going to climb it from the far side. Bus said no.
Time to head back down.
Not a lot of staircases today, this one near the summit was probably the only one.
On the way down I walked along the bottom of the wall instead of along the top.
After the earlier bus debacle, I was thrilled to get back to the bus stop and find a personal electric chariot waiting for me.
So in summary, I managed once again to make a short hike into a somewhat longer one.
There are currently 1 comments - click to add
mother on 2026-04-16 said:
Interesting that the buses aren't stopping for you. Are there people on them or are they just going back to the depot?
The end for now
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jenny on 2026-04-15 said:
i like this touristy town