The city of lakes and home of dakgalbi, ‘Chuncheon’ 가을로 물든 도시, 춘천

Photos by Aoife Casey

The city of Chuncheon is a favourite weekend destination for Seoulites to escape to and re-embrace nature as it is a mere hour by ITX from the centre of the city. The capital of Gangwon Province it is also known as the city of lakes, dakgalbi(spicy chicken with vegetables) and makguksu(buckwheat noodles with spicy sauce).

The first day was spent exploring the expanse of lake, east of Chuncheon. To do this I took a bus from the main Chuncheon subway station to Soyang Dam. Soyang Dam is the largest sand-gravel dam in East Asia, an impressively collosal sight. You can venture around this area across the bridge, a main point for ‘selfies’ and family walks. I walked down to a small harbour where you could choose from a number of boats running certain routes for hikers and tourists.

The most popular by far was the boat heading toward Cheongpeong Temple and the Water Culture Centre. I decided to take a lesser popular trip which went as far east along the lakes as possible to Yang-gu.

The round trip is and hour and forty minutes roughly, forty minutes up the lakes to Yanggu point, 20 minutes bathroom and walking stop then you head back. I decided to stay to explore and catch the later boat back.

A five minutes walk up from the harbour and you can see a hiking path on your right. I spent an hour exploring the path and walking along the side of the lake. It was incredibly peaceful and I did not meet one fellow walker in the two hours there.

I took some self portraits one which I have shown here. I highly recommend this for a place to really get away, the only sounds were echoes from dingy boats bringing campers and their equipment out onto the lake for the night and bird call. I later took the last boat at 4pm back to Soyang Dam and headed back to Chuncheon from there.

 

 

Contributoir, Aoife Casey

She is an Irish artist living and working in Seoul, Korea. She expresses problems of existence with performance, photo, sculpture, installation more than 10 years. She is in full activity with her own view as an artist in recent.

아일랜드 출신의 작가 이퍼 케이시는 10년 이상을 퍼포먼스, 조각, 설치, 사진 등의 작업을 통해 인간의 신체적 혹은 존재의 문제를 다루어 왔다. 2013년 부터 서울에 거주하며 활발한 활동을 하고 있다.