Leg 42: Jukdojeong Pavilion to Hajodae Beach

Fall weather in Korea is somewhat unpredictable.  The Pacific is brimming with typhoons.  While they don’t often hit Korea very hard because of Japan providing a shield at times, or typhoons veering off into China, they can often be felt in Korea in rainfall and general storminess.  I had not gone to the coast a couple of weekends in a row because of forecast rains.  However, I finally got tired of waiting and decided that if I was going to get wet, then I was going to get wet.  I set off after work on the Friday… in the rain.  The rain was supposed to let up overnight and it was supposed to be sunny and warmer on the Saturday.  I had decided to trust the forecast on that, despite the forecast app on my phone being very often wrong, and sometimes quite wildly so.

I got to Yang Yang, somewhere between Gangneung and Sokcho around 1 in the morning.  It was still raining, but only a little bit.  That was a hopeful sign.  I got a motel room near the bus station, and checked Google Maps to figure out what bus to take in the morning to get to my start point, which wasn’t so very far away.  It seemed easy enough.

When I got up in the morning, it was not sunny and warm.  It wasn’t cold, however.  And there was no rain.  So I scored a half point for the app.

I made my way out to the start point, which was as easy as Google Maps had made it seem.  And I was on my way by about 9 in the morning.  On tap this day were a couple of short legs, at less than 10 kilometres each.  That was hopefully going to mean that I would be able to do a third leg, that was quite a bit longer, and end up in Sokcho the next day.

I set off.  When I arrived at the point where I had left off, I was attracted to the beach near the sign.  The waves were crashing and the seas were quite high.  It seemed there would be a good deal of dramatic scenery for the day as a result.

The trail wound away from the seaside for a while, through trees heavy with one of the good fall fruits here, persimmons.  There are two kinds of persimmons.  One is hard and crunchy, kind of like an apple, if it was shaped like a tomato.  The other kind is soft, but still shaped like a tomato.  They are both delicious.  While I was walking along, I passed a property with a woman who was picking the persimmons off her trees.  She called me over and insisted that I take two of them to carry on my way.  Country people everywhere are wonderful people.

I passed this house.  I thought it was very interesting that the entrance was to get up and in was in the hollowed out support pillar under the house.  I’m really not sure that is the safest way to treat a support… but at least it’s just one house.  I guess it’s probably stable enough as a result.

Then it was back to the coast.  The seas were still entertaining.

The trail then passed across the 38^th parallel.  This is the point that is generally used to reference the dividing line between North and South Korea before the Korean war, the border that North Korea violated to begin the Korean War.  And there is a memorial on the east coast.  There is also a little museum detailing the general events of the was, and with a few artifacts from people who fought and died.  There have been interesting little memorials to the Korean War all up the coast.  The memorial museum was quite small and only required a few minutes to see, but was nonetheless another reminder of the history of this country.

And a bit further up the road from that point, there was an actual war memorial statue that looked quite nice.  And then the leg ended shortly after that.