seoul's fortress wall

one of the coolest things i have done in south korea is hike seoul's fortress wall, and it took about 9 hours to do.

it was first built in 1396 as a means to protect the city during the joseon dynasty.  most of the wall still exists today, though since 1396 seoul has grown tremendously and the wall no longer hugs the city, but the city now hugs the wall.  

the wall was built to connect with 4 of seoul's small mountains to help aide in seoul's protection.  it stretches out for 18.2 km and forms a ring around the city, up mountains, through parks and beside restaurants.  within the wall are 4 main gates each facing a different direction; north, south, east and west.  

we started our hike at 10:30 in the morning.  it began at the south gate called sungnyemun which is the largest gate constructed in seoul.

in 2008 a man set fire to this gate as revenge to the government for taking over his land.  the top half of the gate was made of wood, so unfortunately a lot of the gate was destroyed.  since then they have begun reconstruction and hope to be finished by the end of the year.

these men are sorting through remains that they have salvaged to place back onto the gate.



we continued on our hike through the city.  some of the time we were able to walk along the wall and other times we found the wall to be non-existent and had to wind through back alleys in order to find it again.

after about an hour of hiking we got a little side tracked and thought it would be fun to geo-cache, not realizing that we still had 8 hours to go.

we continued on our hike and ascended up our first mountain called inwangsan.  this part of the hike provided beautiful views of the city scape which contrasted old structures with new high rises as well as  allowed us to see the blue house, (which is where the president lives and is the equivalent to the united states' white house.)

as we left inwangsan, we approached a memorial in honor of the south korean soldiers who fought off north korean soldiers who planned to assassinate the president in 1968.  in the end, south korea was able to divert the mission.  because of their attempt, the wall was officially closed off to the public in order to protect that part of the wall that guards the blue house.  in 2007 the wall was reopened to the public.

immediately after viewing the statue we were led to our second gate, changuimun gate.  we walked through the gate and ate lunch at a quaint little restaurant.

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after lunch we continued up the mountain called bugaksan.  in order to have access to this part of the wall, we needed our passport or alien card.  this part of the wall is heavily guarded every 50-100 yards and many areas along the wall are restricted to taking any photos.

still to come: 6 more hours of hiking.