Photos of From Gangneung to Sinnam, Gangwon Province, Korea

About eighteen kilometres southeast of Gangneung on the coast of Gangwon-do (Gangwon Province) is Jeongdongjin, with its beach, one of the most popular sites in Korea for watching the sunrise on New Year’s Day. It is the site of Hourglass Park with its giant hourglass that takes a full year to flow down, and where a popular soap opera with that name was filmed in 1994.

Overlooking Jeongdongjin from a hill is the Sun Cruise Resort, a hotel designed to look like a cruise ship, with its park. Four kilometres north of Jeongdongjin is Gangneung Unification Park, with its displays of North Korean vessels: a wooden boat used by 11 North Koreans who escaped in 2009 and a submarine that ran aground here in 1996. Also displayed are several military aircraft, including the famous Sabre Jet and President Syngman Rhee’s plane.

Further south along the coast, past Donghae, is Samcheok on the Osipcheon Stream, surrounded by a gorgeous coastline and 55 caves; it hosts the Mystery of Caves Exhibition, depicting cave formations in a museum in Expo Town, just to the southwest of the city. East of Samcheok is Hwanseongul Cave, Korea’s biggest limestone cave. It was created 530,000 years ago and is one of the largest in Asia, featuring stalagmites, stalactites and about ten lakes and waterfalls. Its length is 6.2 kilometres, and it has almost 2 kilometres of steel stairways.

About 20 kilometres south of Samcheok, overlooking Sinnam Port, is Haesindang Park, also called Penis Park, with over 50 phallic sculptures above the small coastal town of Sinnam, about 20 kilometres south of Samcheok. The sculptures were entered for a contest in Samcheok’s Penis Sculpture Festival (now defunct because of the pressure of the Christian community). Its background is the tragic “Legend of Auebawi and Haesindang”, but the sculptures depict a vibrant imagination!