Pyeongchang is Korea's mountain country. A highland county of clean air and alpine meadows in Gangwon Province, where Koreans go to ski in winter, to escape the heat in summer and to breathe all year round. Its average altitude, around 700 metres, gives it a cool, healthy climate that the county proudly promotes under the slogan 'Happy 700'. It is a landscape of wooded slopes, sheep farms, ski resorts and Buddhist temples tucked away among the mountains.
The whole world got to know Pyeongchang in February 2018, when it hosted the Winter Olympics. Those Games — also remembered for the historic joint march of the two Koreas under a unification flag — left the area with first-class infrastructure: Olympic ski resorts, a ski jumping centre, an Olympic plaza and a high-speed rail link to Seoul that today puts the mountains less than two hours from the capital.
This guide covers Pyeongchang with a practical eye: how to get there by KTX from Seoul, what to do in winter (skiing and snow) and in summer (meadows, gondolas and trails), how to visit the ancient Woljeongsa Temple and Odaesan National Park, how to make the most of the Olympic legacy and how to get around a county where everything is far apart. It is Korea's quintessential mountain getaway, for every season.
Pyeongchang is a mountain land with a long Buddhist tradition and a modern fame tied to sport. In its mountains, in the year 643, the monk Jajang founded Woljeongsa Temple on the sacred Odaesan massif ('the five peaks'), one of the great centres of Korean Buddhism for more than thirteen centuries. For much of its history this was a rural, isolated county of highland farming, livestock and forests, with long, snowy winters. That same altitude and snowfall, once synonymous with hardship, became its greatest asset in the 20th century: Pyeongchang turned into Korea's ski capital. After two failed bids, the region was chosen to host the 2018 Winter Olympics, which put it on the world map and modernised its access and facilities. The full story, from the Odaesan temple to the Olympic venue, is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The Korea of mountains and snow, split in two by the border: the Taebaek range, Seoraksan park and Pyeongchang of the Olympic Games.
Read the history of The east and the mountains (Gangwon) →A local guide tells you in half an hour what no sign at the site will ever explain. We look ours up on Civitatis: guided in Spanish and booked online with no fuss. They have over 10 activities in Seul. And there are free tours here: you book without paying and tip the guide whatever you think at the end, so trying one costs you nothing. Three are below so you get the idea: tap any of them and they all open.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Before Pyeongchang meant skiing and the Olympic Games, it was for more than a thousand years a land of monks and sacred mountains. The spiritual heart of the region is the Odaesan massif. Its name, 'mountain of the five peaks or plateaus', refers to the five heights that Buddhist tradition links to five dwellings of bodhisattvas. Since ancient times, Odaesan has been counted among the most revered mountains of Korean Buddhism.
The key figure in this story is the monk Jajang, one of the great masters of Silla Buddhism. In the 7th century he travelled to Tang dynasty China and came back with relics and teachings. According to tradition, in 643 Jajang founded the temple of Woljeongsa on the slopes of Odaesan, and it would become one of the main monastic centres in the country. Over the centuries, an intense religious and cultural life grew up around Woljeongsa and the nearby temple of Sangwonsa, which keeps the oldest dated bronze bell in Korea, from the 8th century.
These temples have been rebuilt again and again after fires and wars, including the devastation of the Korean War, and they are still alive and active. They explain why Pyeongchang, long before it became a sports destination, was already a place of pilgrimage and retreat, wrapped in the silence of its pine and fir forests.
For most of its history, Pyeongchang was a remote rural county where life was hard and shaped by the mountains. It lies in the highlands of Gangwon Province, at an average altitude of around 700 metres. Winters were long and snowy and summers cool, and people lived from highland farming (potatoes, maize, buckwheat), livestock and forestry. The area was quite cut off from the country's big centres: getting here meant crossing mountain passes such as the historic Daegwallyeong pass, and that was no easy task.
Yet the same landscape that made daily life difficult also shaped an identity and a culture of its own. Gangwon is the land of buckwheat noodles (memil), dishes made with mountain herbs and mushrooms (sanchae), potatoes, and a close bond with the forest and the snow. In the 20th century, the Daegwallyeong plateau, with its high pastures, became one of Korea's great livestock areas, famous for its beef (hanwoo) and its dairy products.
In short, for centuries Pyeongchang was one of those beautiful but out-of-the-way places that history passes by. Nothing suggested that those same conditions (the altitude, the cold, the heavy snow) would one day make it the capital of a sport and host to the whole world.
Pyeongchang's transformation began in the second half of the 20th century. South Korea was modernising at dizzying speed, and an urban middle class appeared with the time and money for leisure. Gangwon's heavy snow and its slopes made the region the natural destination for skiing, a sport that became very popular in the country. In 1975 the Yongpyong (Dragon Valley) resort opened. It was Korea's first large modern ski resort and remained the country's most important one for decades.
Over the years other resorts and complexes followed, such as Alpensia and Phoenix, and the whole Daegwallyeong area came to specialise in winter sports and in mountain tourism all year round. Yongpyong even gained unexpected fame across Asia in the early 2000s, when it was the setting for the TV drama 'Winter Sonata'. The show was a hit of the 'Korean wave' (hallyu) and drew crowds of tourists.
With that kind of infrastructure and tradition, it was only a matter of time before Pyeongchang aimed for the top. The region bid for the Winter Olympics and lost by a very narrow margin twice, for 2010 and for 2014, before it was finally chosen for 2018. Its persistence paid off in the end.
In February 2018, Pyeongchang was the centre of the world. The region hosted the XXIII Olympic Winter Games and, shortly afterwards, the Paralympic Games, with thousands of athletes and visitors from all over the planet. It was the second time South Korea had hosted the Olympics, after the Seoul 1988 Summer Games, and the first time it hosted the Winter Games. Events were split between Pyeongchang's mountain venues (skiing, ski jumping, biathlon, sliding) and the ice arenas of nearby Gangneung on the coast (skating, hockey, curling).
The Games left the region with first-class infrastructure and one decisive link: the KTX Gyeonggang high-speed rail line. It cut the journey from Seoul to under two hours and is still the most convenient way to get here. Beyond the sport, though, those Games are remembered for a gesture loaded with political and emotional meaning. At a moment of thaw between the two Koreas, the teams of North and South Korea marched together at the opening ceremony under a single unification flag, and they even fielded a joint women's hockey team. For a few days, the Korean mountains were the setting for a rare moment of rapprochement between the two countries.
The mascots of those Games, the white tiger Soohorang and the black bear Bandabi (for the Paralympics), became much-loved symbols of the event. The Olympic flame is still remembered in the plaza where the ceremonies were held.
After the Olympic celebrations, Pyeongchang faced the challenge almost every host faces after the Games: what to do with the venues and how to keep the momentum going. The region chose to establish itself as Korea's great mountain destination, for every season. In winter, its ski resorts (Yongpyong, Alpensia, Phoenix) are still the most important in the country, with night skiing and snow activities. In summer, the altitude and cool air of the 'Happy 700' plateau draw people escaping the muggy heat of the cities. They come for the alpine meadows, the panoramic gondolas, the sheep ranches and the trails of Odaesan.
The Olympic legacy lives on at the Pyeongchang Olympic Plaza, with its memorial and its mascots, and in the venues that can be visited or used today. The high-speed link with Seoul finally brought the mountains close to the capital and put Pyeongchang on the map for domestic tourism. And just a few kilometres from the ski slopes, the ancient temples of Odaesan still offer a haven of spirituality and forest.
So Pyeongchang today brings together its two souls. One is old: a sacred mountain with Buddhist monasteries wrapped in fir trees. The other is modern: sport, snow and an international profile. It went from remote rural county to host of the world, and its story is that of a place that turned its biggest hardship, the altitude and the cold, into its greatest treasure.
