Sokcho and Seoraksan National Park
Trip dates: November 12, 2016 - November 14, 2016
Sokcho is a bit off the beaten path (if you're not Korean) but we wanted to check out Seoraksan National Park which has some beautiful and unique scenery.
We arrived the day before and wandered around by the beach, since Sokcho is on the east coast of South Korea. Fun fact - Sokcho is the only area in South Korea with Pokemon Go! There were tons of people playing and we even saw a little Pokemon Go shack to shelter players from the cold. Other random observation was that tons of people were buying fireworks and shooting them off at the beach.
For the national park, we had planned on doing a series of shorter hikes for the day as my ankle had been acting up a little from carrying our heavy bags around in Japan, but I felt pretty good on the day of so we decided to do a shorter but more grueling hike that is only 4 km roundtrip but with a ton of stairs and rock stairs to Ulsan Bawi. Seriously, we read up about the hike before going and still could not fathom how many stairs there were! Lishan ended up taking a Kimmy Schmidt approach by doing 10-ish stairs at a time, then a brief break, and repeat; it seemed to work out pretty well.
Even though we had been walking a ton daily in Japan, we hadn't done as many stairs so even the way back down was a little tough. Our legs got pretty wobbly on the way down and we were pretty tuckered out after that hike. However, the views were out of this world and completely worth it - check it out!
Interested in retracing our steps? Perhaps you stumbled upon this page looking for more info on how to get to Sokcho from Seoul.
There was a lot of sporadic info out there and since I love to plan ahead for these sorts of details, it drove me a bit nuts. Here's a collection of info that I thought would be useful for others in the future.
- Buses from Seoul depart from either of two locations: Dong Seoul (goes to Sokcho intercity bus terminal, most directions are from here - may also be mentioned as Gangbyeon Station) or Gangnam Express Bus Terminal (which goes to the Sokcho Express Bus Terminal). We stayed in Gangnam in Seoul so opted to use the Gangnam express bus terminal and then booked a hotel in Sokcho right by the express bus terminal.
- For popular routes and times, tickets will sell out. We did an exploratory trip the day before to buy tickets, which worked out well since we got our assigned seats early and knew where to go the following day. When we arrived in Sokcho, we bought our return tickets at the station. Neither station agent had good English, but honestly it was as simple as station name + desired departing time and that was all you needed.
- Pay by credit card only.
On arrival in Sokcho, everyone says to take the 7 or 7-1 bus to Seoraksan but I wasn't able to find a lot more details on where to find the bus stops, which direction they're facing, etc.
- Buses to Seoraksan go south/east through Sokcho on their way to Seoraksan. This meant for us, the 7/7-1 bus stop we wanted was across the street from the express bus terminal. This was conveniently located by the hostel/hotel we stayed at, WithU, which we highly recommend.
- I took images from Seoraksan's bus stop about the 7 and 7-1 routes as I found it helpful. Since we stayed further south by the Sokcho express bus terminal, we took the 7 up north to the fish market area to get food on our way back from Seoraksan, then simply hopped on another one going south to get back to our hotel.
- Fares were W1,200 per person. We read to have exact change in other blogs, but life happens and that wasn't always possible. Luckily, our bus drivers had change when we needed it though YMMV.
Hopefully that helps someone (anyone?), but let us know if you have any questions! Definitely check out Seoraksan if you're into hiking!
