01 · The mountain
Seoraksan
Korea's favourite mountain is 14 kilometres from the cruise berth. Its most famous rock is said to have arrived late.
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Photo: kallerna / CC BY-SA 4.0What Sokcho is
Sokcho in 4 stories
Sokcho is a fishing and resort town on Korea's north-east coast, about 50 km by road from the DMZ at Goseong and backed by the granite peaks of Seoraksan. Its cruise terminal stands on the Cheongho-dong spit, where refugees from the north settled during the Korean War and still serve squid sundae. Most of the 26 million people who visit each year are Korean weekenders; cruise passengers are a few thousand a year, and Saturday is the busy day.
02 · The village
Abai Village
Nine minutes' walk from the gangway is a village founded by refugees who stopped at the first safe harbour south of home. Seventy-five years on, they are still waiting.
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03 · The temple
Naksansa
The bodhisattva of compassion is said to live on an island in the southern sea. In 671 a monk decided this cliff was it.
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04 · The table
The Sokcho table
The two fish that built this port are both in trouble. What people eat in Sokcho now is partly what is left, and partly what the refugees invented.
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Read the culture, then plan the clock: the Sokcho day plans and the Top 10 turn all of this into a day that ends at the gangway with an hour to spare.