If you go to a place called Hwareyong [화령재] along Korea’s Baekdu-Daegan Trail, you’ll see something about like this:
Me at the Baekdu-Daegan Hwaryeong Stele
(Camera on 12-second delay, resting against a rock on the ground)
(Camera on 12-second delay, resting against a rock on the ground)
Following are more pictures of the area around this giant stele [seven meters (23 feet) in height] and comments:
It says this stele was erected in September 2007. The various monuments and steles like this of the Baekdu-Daegan were mostly erected in the past ten years (according to their inscriptions), in my experience.
I made my tent and slept in that pavilion (or jeongja) overnight, as is acceptable practice among Korean hikers. (I wouldn’t have done this had I not observed Koreans doing it before several times.) It was very comfortable and dry.
Dawn at Hwaryeong
That is dawn the next day, and soon I was on my way. The road here, crossing this low pass, was well-frequented by buses (at least one every ten minutes, it felt like) till even after 7 PM, which in rural Korea is about equivalent to the midnight hour in Seoul. There is a town a few kilometers away. The vehicles that stopped at the pull-over area in front of the stele seemed to be lost drivers checking their maps and one guy who used the toilet and then sped off again.
Finding the trail was a little hard north of here, and I got lost on false trails leading to many tombs. That cost me about an hour. Soon I was back on track again, and headed north towards Songni National Park [속리산],…
[I write this from a Jeomchon motel. My trip is ending soon. This is my final anticipated “comfort accommodation” until I return to Seoul next week. I bought a lot of food here. I expect to update next from Seoul in a week’s time.]