Korea Slow Trip - Medieval Thatched Roof Village of Naganeupseong

Atop earthen walls we stood, countless thatched roofs beneath us stretching across an ancient landscape at this remote corner of the Korean Peninsula. Something vaguely reminded of the Japanese mountain village of Shirakawago, yet this place is even more secluded and harder to reach, and just as difficult to pronounce.


We're at the medieval walled village of Naganeupseong (낙안읍성), the last remaining sample of a fortified regional capital from Joseon Dynasty Korea. Beyond the watchtower balustrade was a backdrop worthy of the latest K-drama production, except that these charming huts of wood and mud still serve as residences for centuries-old local clans, some dating from the 1300s.


It's a living fossil among dozens of former county seats from feudal Korea, nearly all of them dismantled under Japanese colonization and subsequently devoured by rapid urbanization of the post-Korean War era. Amazingly little has affected this 600-year-old commune, home to several hundred villagers now credited for keeping alive the traditional rituals and folk arts of Korea's deep south.


Once the prevalent architecture across Korea when tiled roofs were considered too decadent for peasants, the thatched-roofed chogajib has become an endangered species in the 21st century, preserved mainly in three remote villages far away from Seoul. While the other two -- Hahoe and Yangdong in Gyeongsangbuk-do -- have been elevated to UNESCO World Heritage Sites and enjoying international fame, Naganeupseong remains on the tentative list and continues to fly under the radar of foreign tourists ... at least for now.


If you love off-the-beaten-track gems, Naganeupseong is one of my top recommendations especially when combined with the nearby UNESCO World Heritage temple of Seonamsa (30 minutes by car or bus) and Korea's largest tea plantation at Boseong (1 hour drive). Adding the Suncheon Bay National Garden and the coastal grassland's famous hanwoo beef to the itinerary, it made a great excursion for a 48-hour car rental.


At the last minute we booked our two-night stay at a traditional hanok guesthouse, attached to a restaurant just outside the walled village with free parking. The key influence here was the comfort of an ensuite bathroom for the cold February nights, without the consideration of which we could have taken our chance with any chogajib farmhouse within the village.


In low season our gracious hosts upgraded us to a two-room suite equipped with a platform bed with a mattress. The modern necessity of air conditioning/heating was a given, along with ondol floor heating for chilly evenings spent watching those crazy Korean game shows on TV.


The kitchen was functional with an induction stove top, microwave, sink and fridge with a foldable soban low table for a breakfast of instant porridge on the warm ondol floor. Bathroom came with your typical Korean shower that made everything wet. Ugh.


Waking up to the soft light coming through the hanji latticed paper windows was a treat. Ahead of us was a full day of sightseeing starting with Naganeupseong and moving onto Seonamsa after lunch, followed by Suncheon Bay National Garden and wrapping up with dinner at Suncheon's Aretjang Market.


The village entrance was marked by a collection of whimsical jangseung, long dismissed as vestiges of Korea's shamanistic past and only recently rediscovered as folk art and propagated by the few village elders who still possess the craftsmanship. While the jangseung were meant to ward off evil spirits, the main guardian of the village was an unmortared stone wall that remains largely circumnavigable to this date.


Fortified on a flat agricultural plain against the threat of medieval Japanese pirates, Naganeupseong was a thriving regional centre of a thousand farmers and government workers back in its Joseon Dynasty heyday. Nowadays the walled town is still inhabited by two hundred locals in their ancestral homes of earthen walls and wooden beams, and of course the signature roofs that have to be re-thatched every year.


Despite the advent of 21st century tourism, the villagers' agrarian lifestyle is evidenced by the universal presence of onggi urns, indispensable for storage and fermentation of vegetables and seasonings to survive the harsh Korean winter.


The wood-fired kiln of a ceramicist was just one example of Naganeupseong's significance as a 21st century repository of traditional arts and folk rituals, culminating annually in a full-scale celebration of Daeboreum including an elaborate straw-burning procession attracting TV crews every winter.


At least half of these thatched huts seasonally operate as minbak guesthouses to provide a truly immersive experience into Korean village life. Despite their rustic earthen appearances many cottage are now fitted with the modern convenience of air-conditioning and ondol floors heated by electric wires rather than the old-fashioned hearth. That said, one can expect the bathroom in the form of an outhouse in the courtyard.


The largest and most elegant residence now houses the Naganeupseong Preservation Society -- and doubles as the de facto corner store for the villagers. Together with eight other structures that survived both Japanese colonization and the Korean War, these Joseon Dynasty relics now comprise a cluster of national heritage buildings often featured in period K-dramas, including the original Daejanggeum.


Perhaps the most prominent building is the vividly restored pavilion of Nakminru, located next to the old magistrate's office and perfect for the Joseon Dynasty governor's poetry parties and moon-viewing pleasure.


A courthouse diorama graces the tile-roofed mansion of the local governor, the most beloved being national hero Im Gyeong-eop who defended the Joseon Dynasty against a 17th century Manchurian invasion. A 300-year-old stone stele dedicated to the legendary general has warranted its own protective roof at the centre of the village.


General Im's lasting imprint on Naganeupseong was its full-scale ramparts of elegant watchtowers and robust hewn stone -- no small endeavour for a town of merely a thousand -- now considered among the best preserved in Korea. Local legends tell of a friendly competition between the general and his seamstress elder sister on whether the general's soldiers would complete the ramparts before the local women would grow enough cotton to provide them with quilted armours.


A panorama from the rampart's highest point reveals the fertile coastal plains of Nagan River and its traditional crops of rice and radishes, 150 km from the medieval Japanese pirate base of Tsushima which necessitated these walls.


From the vantage point of the walls one gains a rare peek into a pastoral lifestyle largely unchanged since the Joseon Dynasty. Despite the existence of minbak guesthouses and hanbok rental shops, we barely ran into any other visitor, Korean or foreign, on this February day.


Late February also marked the start of plum blossom season at the Korean Peninsula's southern shore. These blossoms at Naganeupseong was just a foretaste of one of Korea's most famous plum-viewing locales, the UNESCO World Heritage temple of Seonamsa located just 10 km to the north.


This pictured hotteok joint was among the multifarious food options at Naganeupseong. We nearly sat down at a noodle stand inside the walled village until I remembered to consult the Korean reviews on Naver Map.


We tried two different restaurants over our two night stay at Naganeupseong. One was a forgettable Sundubu place not even worth reviewing; the other was a recommendable eatery known as Seonbichon (선비촌, see map). You won't find any English signage outside nor any English menus inside -- see the above picture for what the place looks like.


The lack of English menus shouldn't be a problem as the place offers only two choices -- a standard table d'hôte or an even more substantial table d'hôte covering all the regional specialties. We're talking freshwater crabs, blood cockles from nearby shellfish farms plus Hanwoo beef patties from the coastal grasslands, all for a reasonable 19000 Won (CAD$22) per person.


Arguably Jeollanam-do Province's most famous dish, the pillowy and savory tteokgalbi is a meaty treat once reserved for the royal court when no peasant could afford to slaughter a ploughing cattle. These days the nearby grasslands of Suncheon Bay has become the province's capital of Hanwoo beef, a premium ingredient worthy of a dedicated meal at Suncheon the next night.


Of course no serious foodie would leave without sampling the regional specialty of Ggomakhoe Muchim, or tender blood cockles marinated in a sweet and spicy soy mixture. It's impossible to miss as every restaurant in town featured this one dish.


Down it with a shot of soju or wrap it in a ssambap -- you've got to love the umami essence of this underrated shellfish from Korea's cockle capital of Beolgyo, a 10 minute drive south of here.


And rather than the standard doenjang jjigae, our hotpot came with the luxury of a whole freshwater crab -- and paired with a mild doenjang so avoid overpowering the crab's delicate umami flavour.


A sweet and chewy gamja-jeon was one of the memorable banchans in a surprisingly good meal for a major tourist attraction. For even better price-performance-ratios you'd have to take the short drive to Suncheon; this place would do for a quick meal after visiting Naganeupseong.

Meal for Two Persons

Tteokgalbi Jeonsik x 2	38000 Won
Soju	4000 Won
TOTAL	42000 Won (CAD$48)

IF YOU GO

Naganeupseong is located near Korea's southern coastline in Jeollanam-do Province. From Seoul, take the highspeed KTX train (3 hours) to the nearest city of Suncheon. While several local buses (61/63/68) can bring you to Naganeupseong, I highly recommend renting a car (there is a Lotte Rent-a-Car branch next to the train station) and visit both Naganeupseong and nearby Seonamsa temple, and perhaps Korea's largest tea plantation at Boseong if you can afford more than one day.

Korea Slow Trip - Rummaging Thru Korea's Largest Tea Plantation

Hailed by CNN in its 31 must-see places around the world and widely considered among Korea's most photogenic sights, the terraced tea plantations of Boseong (보성) was a last minute addition that became one of my wife's favourite memories of the trip. It probably should have been higher on our list, but I thought we had to leave the southwestern coast for a future trip until our planned visit to the southeast was derailed by the COVID outbreak in Daegu.


Already a household name among domestic visitors, Boseong would have been internationally famous if it wasn't hidden at the farthest corner of the Korean Peninsula, a sparsely populated stretch of coastal Jeollanam-do in the deep south. And there is a good reason: tea plants simply won't survive the harsh Korean winter once you get past the southernmost 100 km of the Peninsula.


Endless rolling hills of meticulously manicured tea plants stretch across the small county, enough to cover 700 football fields and accountable for a third of Korea's national production. Initiated by the Japanese in the colonial era and expanded by Korean entrepreneurs since the 1950s, the nation's tea capital draws over a million visitors per year to its demonstration plantation set up by Daehan Dawon (대한다원), by far Korea's largest tea producer for decades until the recent challenge from Jeju's O'sulloc. But that's a different story.


For photographers and tea enthusiasts this would be an absolute must-do, and for the rest of us a 3-day trip encompassing the thatched roof town of Naganeupseong, UNESCO World Heritage Seonamsa monastery and perhaps the Suncheon Bay National Garden would make a fantastic getaway from the frenetic rhythms of Seoul.


That morning we hopped on a highspeed KTX train from Seoul to Jeonju and picked up a rental car for our 48-hour round-trip to the far south, stopping first at Boseong before spending the night at Naganeupseong. It was already 14:30 when we arrived at the plantation, and a quick glance at the map showed that 2 hours would be the bare minimum for exploring the fields with a tasting at the teahouse.


Occupying just a small corner of Daehan Dawon's expansive plantation, the demonstration area features an entire hill of selfie-able spots with several designated viewing platforms, a factory-direct store with its own tea processing workshop, its own tea museum nearby with a guesthouse for clients to fully immerse into the plantation's misty mornings, and of course the Korean necessity of dessert cafes for everything from malcha latte to tea-infused jjajangmyeon.


Those familiar with the Japanese tea capital of Uji would find Boseong's terroir eerily similar: acidic soil types, deep foggy valleys to maximize diurnal temperature variations for the prevention of frost, around 1600 mm of annual precipitation and even down to the same latitude of 34.8°N. That's certainly no coincidence, its location handpicked by Japanese pioneers modelling after Uji.


That's just another thread in the intricate linkages between Korea and Japan in the world of tea, introduced via maritime trade from Korea to medieval Japan where its ceremonial preparation blossomed into the art of Chado. Korean tea bowls became highly treasured by teamasters such as the great Sen-no-Rikyu for their raw beauty and minimalism, and in time Japanese colonists would bring their expertise to restart the tea industry in early 20th century Korea, the full maturity of which we now witness in Boseong.


While April is often promoted as the best time to visit for the year's first plucking, February and March bring in the bright colours of plum and subsequently cherry blossoms. Also strategically planted alongside the tea are rows of Korean cypresses to temper the destructive gusts from seasonal typhoons.


The exceptionally steep slopes of Boseong is a double-edged sword: a curse for plantation owners as it drastically increases labour cost, but a blessing for connoisseurs as the entire year's harvest would follow the traditional hand-plucking process typically reserved only for the first plucking in Uji's model. The only mechanization possible is the installation of flimsy monorails for transporting small crates of harvested leaves to the processing workshop at the bottom, much like the terraced vineyards in Lavaux, Switzerland.


Resting huts for workers and visiting scientists occupy a far corner of the plantation. Just north of Boseong town is Korea's 21st century national research centre for tea cultivation, responsible for preservation of genetic diversity, clonal breeding, disease resistancy improvements and other cutting edge developments.


This all breathes new life into an ancient terrain where ancestral graves can still be found scattered across the plantation. Visitors would peak in December during the annual light festival when the plantation is decked with millions of LED bulbs for Christmas season.


A 15 minute uphill hike would take visitors to two viewing platforms near the hilltop: a Tea Plantation Viewing Platform (차밭전망대) for an unbeatable vista of tea terraces from above, and an Ocean Viewing Platform (바다전망대) for a southerly view of the Korean coastline.


An undulating carpet of lush green unfolds across the rolling hills, beyond which the nearshore islands of Dadohae Haesang National Park float outward from the azure coastline of Joellanam-do. Behind the horizon would be Boseong's arch-rival in Korean tea production, the offshore province of Jeju-do best known for its O'sulloc brand of premium teas and tea-infused cosmetic products.


Despite Boseong's unenviable reputation as one of the rainiest spots in Korea, we narrowly managed to avoid the light drizzle forecasted for this day. With constant photo stops it took us over an hour to reach the top, and less than 20 minutes to return to the teahouse at the bottom for a refreshment of the plantation's own sejak tea.


With its pale yellow colour, slightly grassy notes and mild astringency, Korean sejak typically exhibits flavour and aroma profiles somewhat between Japanese sencha and Chinese greens like Biluochun. While Boseong's terroir was modelled after Japanese ideals, the processing mostly follows a Chinese-influenced methodology of pan-roasting followed by manual hand-rolling on a straw mat, repeated several times at decreasing temperatures. It's a labour intensive technique that yields a product so popular in Korea that it's rarely exported overseas.


Even on a cold February day my wife couldn't resist a nokcha ice cream, which perhaps goes well with the Korean adage of Yi Han Ji Han (이한치한), or fighting cold with cold. But following that with another frosty drink of chilled yuja citrus juice was a little over the top.


At the end we spent nearly three hours at the plantation, taking off around 17:15 towards the medieval walled village of Naganeupseong for our next two overnight stays. It was a fantastic start to a side trip that was never planned in the first place.

IF YOU GO

Boseong County (보성군) is located towards the tip of southwestern Korea in Jeollanam-do Province. The nearest city -- and highspeed train station for KTX -- is Suncheon, a 50 minute drive away with a Lotte Rent-a-Car branch conveniently located next to the train station. After picking up the car, type in Daehan Dawon's (대한다원) phone number of 02-511-3455 into the GPS. For cross reference, the Google Maps location is here.