Walking and hiking routes in Korea: the Seoul Dulle-gil, the Seoul City Wall trail, Busan Galmaetgil courses and the national parks, with access, grading and seasonal notes.
Late November, a 4pm start, and a route named “Dadaepo Sunset Picnic” — the timing on this one wasn’t an accident. My friend Hana and I met at Sinpyeong Station with plenty of time to spare before the group’s afternoon departure, watching sunset light slowly creep across the station building as everyone signed in. Distance … Read more
A surprise downpour right before the meeting time had my friend Doyoon and me a little worried Haenuri-gil Course 4 would turn into a soggy, miserable morning, but the rain broke just as the walk was starting — one of those small strokes of luck that set the tone for the rest of the day. … Read more
A barrier-free trail walked by moonlight sounded like a strange combination the first time I heard about it, but that’s exactly what my first walk on this newly opened accessible forest path on Beombangsan was. I’ve walked the trail twice. The first time was in early November with my friend Areum, starting from Gupo Station … Read more
Not every Gamnaetgil-network walk is just two friends out for the day — this one, Yolo Course 2 along the “Secret Coffee Road” stretch near Gijang, was a joint walk organized with a local group for the deaf and hard of hearing community, complete with a sign language interpreter walking alongside the guide. My friend … Read more
Rain the night before had us worried Course 3 of Haenuri-gil would be a muddy, unpleasant walk, but Busan’s trail maintenance turned out to be better than we’d feared. Areum and I got off near BEXCO station under one of those dramatic mackerel-scale cloud skies that only really shows up in late October, and headed … Read more
Busan keeps adding walking trails faster than most visitors can keep track of, and Haenuri-gil — a roughly 50-kilometer network specifically covering Haeundae district’s coast, forest, and downtown areas — is one of the newer ones. My friend Hana and I tried Course 2 not long after it launched, curious what a brand-new trail feels … Read more
Mid-August in Busan is peak beach season, and Course 12 starts right in the thick of it — Mollundae’s newly reopened east beach, orange umbrellas lined up in neat rows against a beach that had only recently been redeveloped after decades as something closer to a quiet cove than a proper swimming beach. Yerim and … Read more
By early August we’d settled into a rhythm of evening walks — the daytime heat in Busan by this point in summer makes anything else genuinely unpleasant — and Course 11 became our third sunset outing in a row. Doyoon and I met at Gamcheon Nanuri Park, a public green space built around a power … Read more
Busan’s other long coastal trail, Haeparang, starts at exactly the spot where Gamnaetgil’s Course 5 ends, at Oryukdo, and heads the opposite way: north along the coast toward Ulsan and eventually Gangwon-do. I walked its first section three times this year. The first was in April, on opening day of a ten-session walking series called … Read more
Typhoon season in Busan means you learn to read the forecast carefully, and Course 10 was our test of exactly how much wind and rain we were willing to walk through. My friend Woojin and I decided to go anyway, figuring a coastal walk in genuinely bad weather might show us a different side of … Read more