Walking Seoul's Wall

 

When I get to a new city I like to walk, and walk, and walk. Being on my feet gives me a chance to get a feel for the place and as I like to spend as much time outside as possible is a natural choice for one of my first days of a visit. For Spring Break this year my mom and I travelled to Seoul, South Korea and realised we had an extraordinary choice for where to walk - alongside part of the old city walls that ringed the original city. There are actually five different sections of the city wall that have marked paths along or near them, as well as 4 main gates to check out and 4 smaller gates. 

     

We ended up choosing one of the more gentle sections to walk, the Naksan Mountain Trail which starts at Hyehwamun Gate and goes until Heunginjimun Gate. Coming in at a little over 2 kilometres it is a fairly short walk (although perhaps for uphill then we had anticipated). We were able to walk along the old walls (partially renovated, although you could still see the three different types of stone blocks used from different time periods) almost the entire way. There were several places to stop for views of the bustling busy city of Seoul. 

        

However I think my favourite part had to be the imposing giant city gates. Often set in the middle of a circle amongst busy city streets, they had amazing paintings on the underside of each gate. It definitely paid to look up! I saw dragons, phoenix, turtles, and deer along with some other creatures that seemed to be a cross of some mythological being and an animal. These vibrant colours and well preserved images were well worth a stop to check out.

In fact, we enjoyed walking the walls of Seoul so much that later in our trip we decided to head out to the town of Suwon, where we could actually walk the entire loop around their town walls. These walls were in remarkably good shape, and we were able to walk along the top of several sections. Technically these walls are part of Hwaseong Fortress, dating back to the Joseon Dynasty. The walls stretch over five and a half kilometres in total length.

 

It was interesting to see the difference in the walls from the interior and the exterior. We realised fairly early on that we were walking the inner trail of the walls. This makes the walls seem not quite as impressive as they actually are - as there is a raised dirt mound on the inside, allowing for defenders to reach the arrow slits and canon points of the walls. When I wandered outside one of the gates and looked back at the walls I realised that the walls were at least twice as tall as we had been experiencing. Quite an engineering feat back in the 1600s. I have to admit that I think walking the walls in and around Seoul was one of my favourite things about the city.