Sokcho is the best of both worlds: mountains and sea in the same place. It's a seafaring city in northeast Korea, with sandy beaches, a port full of seafood restaurants and the relaxed feel of a coastal town; and it is also the gateway to Seoraksan National Park, the most spectacular and revered mountain in the country, with granite peaks, waterfalls, ancient temples and Korea's most famous autumn foliage. In a single day you can ride a cable car up to a fortress on the heights and end up eating crab by the sea.
But Sokcho also has a history that makes it unique and moving. Until the end of the Korean War in 1953, this area was on the northern side of the border, and thousands of North Koreans who fled their villages during the war took refuge here and could never go back. Their neighbourhood, Abai Village, is still a special corner, with its North Korean dishes and its raft that crosses the canal by pulling on a rope. Sokcho is, in this way, a window onto a Korea split in two.
This guide covers Sokcho and Seoraksan with a practical eye: how to get there by bus from Seoul, how to plan your visit to the national park (the cable car, the temples, hikes for every level), what to see in the city and along the coast, where to eat the best seafood and what history lies hidden in Abai Village. It's one of Korea's best-loved nature getaways.
Sokcho's history has been shaped by the division of Korea. When the Second World War ended and the peninsula was divided along the 38th parallel in 1945, Sokcho ended up on the northern side, under North Korean control. During the Korean War (1950-1953) it saw fighting and changed hands; with the 1953 armistice and the new border line, it ended up permanently in the South. Thousands of North Koreans who had fled south during the war were stranded here, unable to return to their villages, and founded Abai Village, which still preserves its North Korean cuisine and memory today. Seoraksan National Park, for its part, holds Buddhist temples of ancient origin, such as Sinheungsa, founded in the days of the Silla kingdom, and was designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1982 for its natural richness. The full story, from the sacred mountain to the city of refugees, 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) →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The story of this corner of northeastern Korea begins, long before any city, on the mountain. Seoraksan — whose name literally means 'mountain of snows', after the frost and snow that cover its peaks for much of the year — has been one of Korea's great sacred mountains since ancient times. It is part of the Baekdudaegan range, the mountainous 'backbone' of the peninsula, which Koreans regard as the spiritual spine of their land.
For centuries, its granite valleys, forests and waterfalls were a refuge for Buddhist monks and hermits, who built temples and small hermitages in the shelter of the peaks. The most important is Sinheungsa temple, whose origins go back to the Silla kingdom more than thirteen hundred years ago; tradition places its first founding in the 7th century, by the renowned monk Jajang. Rebuilt several times over the centuries after fires and other misfortunes, Sinheungsa is still a centre of the Jogye Buddhist order and a spiritual gateway to the mountain.
That antiquity and that natural wealth explain why, in modern times, Seoraksan received the highest levels of protection: it was declared a National Park in 1970 and a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1982, in recognition of its exceptional biodiversity. The mountain is, in this way, the ancient heart around which the whole region revolves.
At the foot of the mountain, on the East Sea, the city of Sokcho grew up as what it still essentially is: a fishing port. The combination of a coast rich in fish and a pair of coastal lagoons (Cheongcho and Yeongnang lakes) made this a good place to settle and make a living from the sea.
For most of its history, Sokcho was a modest town in Gangwon province, devoted to fishing — pollock, squid, crab — and to maritime trade along the east coast. It lacked the importance of the big inland cities or the southern ports, but it did have a clear seafaring identity and an enviable larder of seafood, which to this day remains one of its great hallmarks.
That quiet port life would be shaken in the 20th century by the most dramatic events in Korean history: the Japanese occupation, liberation and, above all, the division of the peninsula and the war. And this is where Sokcho's story becomes truly unique, because few cities in South Korea lived through the partition of the country as directly as this one.
When the Second World War ended in 1945, Korea was freed from Japanese rule but, almost immediately, was split in two by the victorious powers: the Soviets occupied the north and the Americans the south, with the 38th parallel as the dividing line. Because of its location, Sokcho ended up north of that line: for a few years, the city and its region were under North Korean administration.
The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 turned this entire northeastern strip into a battlefield. The region changed hands several times as the front lines swung back and forth. When the armistice was finally signed in July 1953, the new demarcation line — today's fortified border between the two Koreas — left Sokcho, this time, on the southern side. The city that had been born and grown up in the 'north' woke up, after the war, in the 'south'.
That historical quirk still shapes Sokcho today. The border with North Korea lies only a short distance to the north, and the city lives with that closeness. Above all, though, the war left an indelible human mark on Sokcho: that of the thousands of refugees from the north who stayed here for good.
When the Korean War front moved north in 1950 and 1951, many people from the northern Hamgyeong provinces fled south to escape the fighting and the regime. Thousands of them took refuge in Sokcho, at the mouth of Cheongcho Lake, convinced that the separation would be brief and that they would soon be able to return to their villages. But the signing of the armistice in 1953 sealed the border indefinitely, and those refugees were left stranded in the south, with no way of going back to their homeland or being reunited with the relatives they had left behind.
With whatever they had, those displaced people built a neighbourhood of their own on the spit of land facing the channel: Abai Village. The name comes from 'abai', a word that in the Hamgyeong dialect means 'old man' or 'father'. There they rebuilt, as far as they could, a piece of their lost world: their way of speaking, their customs and, above all, their cooking, with dishes such as Hamheung-style naengmyeon (spicy cold noodles) and squid sundae, which today are the neighbourhood's culinary signature.
Abai Village is therefore much more than a picturesque corner: it is a living memorial to the tragedy of Korea's division, to separated families and to an entire generation that waited, year after year, for a return that never came. Its famous raft, which crosses the channel by being pulled along a rope and was made popular by a TV drama, has become a much-loved symbol of a community that turned forced exile into a home.
Today's Sokcho has made its twin treasures — the sea and Seoraksan — the engine of its life. From the second half of the 20th century, and especially as roads improved and domestic tourism took off, the city became one of Koreans' favourite getaway destinations: every autumn, crowds head up to admire Seoraksan's legendary foliage and then come back down to eat fresh seafood by the sea. The cable car to Gwongeumseong fortress, the trails to Ulsanbawi and Biseondae, the beaches and the harbours make Sokcho a place where, in a single day, you can go from the summit to the surf.
The city also modernised and became popular with young people: design cafés opened in Abai Village and along the coast, the Sokcho Eye Ferris wheel went up next to the beach, and the town became known for its fried chicken (dakgangjeong) and its laid-back seaside atmosphere. Far from being a burden, the nearness of the border became part of its identity, a constant reminder of the country's recent history.
In just a few kilometres, then, Sokcho brings together many of Korea's layers: the ancient spirituality of its mountain temples, the power of nature protected by UNESCO, the tragedy and resilience of the national division, and the modern pleasures of the sea and good food. A small city that, seen up close, tells much of the story of a country split in two, and of a natural world that remains, above all, unchanging and sublime.
