The Land of the Morning Calm was once known as the Land of the Beauty Products. Before the division of South and North Korea, the Korean Peninsula was referred to as the Korean Peninsula because of its tranquil, temple-dotted mountains.
The state of South Korea was calm in the years leading up to the Pandemic. It experienced a cultural explosion of art, cuisine, literature and cinema with high profile films like "Parasite" which swept the Oscars in February 2020. The coronaviruses hit and there was a calm. The nation had stopped working.
Korea issued short-term travel visas for the first time in two years on June 1, 2022.
Many urbanites in Korea don't know the secret of rural Korea. In 1960, 39 percent of the country's population lived in urban areas, according to the Statistics of Urban Planning. As a traveler to more than 20 Asian countries, including popular destinations like Cambodia and Thailand, I assumed the slow-paced side of Korea would be like those countries.
I was mistaken.
South Korea is a 38,750- square-mile country that is slightly larger than Indiana but smaller than Kentucky. I didn't know that March wasn't the best time to travel. Mud season is upon us. Smog was at its worst and the wildflowers hadn't bloomed yet.
I lost myself in tranquil thatched-roof hamlets, peaceful Buddhist temples, and unhurried "slow food" towns where a generation of South Korean women over 60 are preserving the country'sculinary heritage.
Getting out of metropolitan Seoul, home to 26 million people, is the first hurdle in visiting rural Korea.
High-speed Korea Rail trains are cheap and efficient, but connect to other areas. It's not cheap to hire a guide and driver, but it's a good way to understand the fast-changing culture. The language barrier was bridged with a hybrid of the two, which allowed for independent exploration and downtime.
It takes about two hours by car to get to the neo-Brutalist sprawl in South Korea. The drive passes row after row of blocky uniform apartment towers, lined up like dominoes in the plains surrounding the bowl shaped basin and eight surrounding guardian mountains.
Gangwon is the northernmost province in South Korea and the location of the movie " Okja" about a lovable pig on a mountaintop farm. There is a 2.5 mile wide buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea.
Domestic travelers have long sought out the pristine beaches, granite-peaked national parks and forested valleys of the northernmost part of South Korea.
One of South Korea's 21 National Parks and a Unesco- listed Biosphere Reserve is called Snow Rock Mountain. There are gift shops and food stalls at the park that sell hot coffee, noodle soups, and dok boki, toothsome rice cakes drenched in a red chili sauce.
The park's highest summit is Daecheong Peak, which can be reached in eight to eleven hours. I didn't I decided to take the shorter cable car ride to the summit of Gwongeum Fortress, which was built in the 13th century to fight off invaders from the Mongolians.
Today, the fortress ruins are hard to see. There are six granite peaks that give the illusion of a giant castle. The gondola ride took me to a network of hiking trails. I took in the views of the East Sea, pine tree-spiked ravines and a 48-foot-high bronze Great Unification Buddha from the top station.
The trails were crowded with elderly Korean women in large visors trying to get a group photo with the granite peaks. Koreans were more direct than some of their Asian neighbors, like people in China or Germany. It was part of the experience when people bumped into me in a coffee shop or on the cable car.
I was the only non- Asian in the crowd at the time. My next stop didn't have any tourists at all. I had booked a temple stay at the Samhwasa, a temple hidden deep in a ravine in the Muneung Valley, but I didn't have the grounds to myself.
I walked through mossy woods with awash in pink spring wildflowers aside waterfalls that trickle over weathered rocks. He led me through the 108 prostrations ceremony, a Buddhist ritual in which I strung together 108 prayer beads to make a necklace.
While ringing the temple bell after supper, he held my hand and said that I was beautiful. The temple stay program is called "Love Myself and Help Five Friends".
Visitors to this place learn to love themselves and then imagine how they can help five friends.
Unlike Japan, which has ornate vegan kaiseki meals, manicured gardens and even onsen baths, Korea's temple stays are more structured and more realistic. Guests are required to complete chores in many cell-like rooms. There are few places for charging phones.
Since its rooms have private showers and toilets, it seemed like a good deal at $70 per night. It was physically demanding, even though it may be spiritual. The pillows were shaped like loaves of sandwich bread and the mattresses were not as thick as a jacket. The floor was still hard even though it wasn't cold.
Dutasan, or Duta mountain, was gripped by a wet cold at 5 a.m. The wake-up call came from a wooden temple drum that echoed up the valley.
I moved my body to the prayer hall where the monks and the woman were praying. While struggling to keep my body in a graceful kneeling prayer position, I found comfort looking at the temple's ceiling, painted elaborately in a riot of Confucian grandeur, with clawed dragons, tigers, ominous Phoenix eyes and bodhisattvas swathed in the requisite yellow, blue-
As the room warmed up from our chanting, the ceiling's pine beams began to fall onto my mat. 'Why me?' I was attempting to clean my phone. After smelling the pine scent, he said, "lucky you." At Samhwasa, perspective is the most important thing.
Gangwon's renowned beaches were one of the highlights of my visit to South Korea. Chuam Beach is a chill surf town famous for its pine-seclusion beaches and sacred Chuam Chotdaebawi Rock. They are said to represent a man who couldn't decide between his wife and concubine, so he was terrified.
hanoks are traditional guesthouses in Korea and are worth a visit. I traveled south for two hours to reach the Gyeongsangbuk province, home to the Andong Hahoe Hanok Village. Most of its low-slung houses lining the stone-walled, earthen lanes have courtyards, thatched roofs and sliding windows covered with hanji, a paper made from mulberry bark.
There is a hanok at the village's center, built for a noble family in the 19th century. It is covered in verandas and shaded by a tree. Its ninth- generation owners have restored its painted screens and heated ondol floors, a system using smoke from a subterranean fire, and hand-woven cotton wool mattresses that were beautiful but made me yearn for something a bit thicker.
It made up for what it cost me. At sunset, I walked through the village's sandy-floored pine forests and saw a pair of water deer running through the riverbed.
I watched the birds light up on the temple roof. Ryu Se-ho, the owner of the restaurant, prepared a spread of vegetables and fish in copper dishes with metal chopsticks. I washed it down with a drink of makgeolli.
A two-hour drive southwest took me past scraggly mountain forests to the lush hilly seashores of North and South Jeolla. These green, relaxed and lesser-developed provinces express the nation's devotion to food the best.
This is the home of Baekyangsa Temple, which was featured in an episode of Chef's Table, a show about food. She isn't the only person who cooks here. Local female food experts are often at the center of each of the slow cities nominated by Slow Food International.
When I arrived in the slowcitta of Jeonju, it was raining. It has a cobbled main street lined with Joseon-era storefronts filled with street food venders.
The next hanok, Hakindang House, was hidden behind a gated garden and had rooms from $75. My room was filled with Korean lacquerware chests, an embroidered burgundy mattress, and woven straw pillows that looked like tissue box covers. Exhausted after a day of travel, I climbed onto the thin mattress and fell asleep listening to the rain on the roof
The great-great-granddaughter of the house's founder welcomed me in the morning. In 1950s style red frame glasses and a fastidiously tied pink silk scarf, she served me an epic breakfast of 25 colorful and meticulously arranged dishes.
The slowcitta of Changpyeong is known for its stone-walled lanes and cafes that serve hangwa, confections sweetened with honey. Ki Soon Do is the Grand Master of Jang, Korea's traditional fermented sauces, which are an essential ingredient to many Korean dishes.
In the front yard of her woodsy home studio, there were dozens of hangari, which were filled with ferments including ganjang, doenjang, and gochujang.
She and her family have been making these sauces for a long time. Mrs. Ki wore a green and gold hanbock dress. The spoon she used to check the sauces was made from a hollow out Gourd. Her son watched her face closely as he understood that her palate is the family's most valuable asset.
On the three-hour high-speed Korea Rail return trip to Seoul, I upgraded to the first class car, awash in red velvet seats and TV screens, for an extra$15 and was able to watch farmland whiz past my window.
The city has a lot of malls, museums, and modern hotels from the Four Seasons to the mid-range Lotte. It's hard to find Old Korea there. During the Pandemic, many city dwellers developed a deeper love for nature and were able to escape the city. As foreign tourism increases, may access to rural areas open up more?
Mrs. Ki told me that foreigners are starting to understand Korean food. We want to share it with the world in order to help preserve these traditions.
You can hire a local operator like Wow Corea to help you book temple and hanok stays in areas where English isn't the main language. The agency is based in New York and Thailand. They like to use guides with a keen understanding of local art and culture. A valid International Driving Permit is required to drive self-drive in South Korea. If you're in South Korea, it's best to use a navigation app like NaverMap. Korean Rail offers several rail passes for international travelers, with a two-day pass starting at $90 and additional discounts for children under 12 and groups of two or more.
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