Seoraksan

Now that it's October and the weather has cooled off and the leaves are changing colours, it's a great time to go hiking in Korea. So I decided to head north about 2 hours to Sokcho, a little coastal city that's the gateway to what's widely considered Korea's best national park, Mt. Seorak.
I arrived on Friday and wanted to get a few hikes in before all the Koreans arrived from Seoul for the weekend. So I started with Ulsanbawi (above), which I believe is the most popular hike in the park. Fortunately, it wasn't too busy yet, and so I was up and down in about 3 hours, and not stuck waiting in lines the whole way.
You have to climb 808 stairs to get to the top, and here you can see one of the sections about two-thirds of the way up, although it's hard to see in the picture how steep it really was.
You'll notice all the Koreans are all decked out in their hiking gear, most of them with hats, gloves and jackets. I went up in a t-shirt and shorts, which got me a lot of stares, in addition to the "Look, it's a foreigner," stares.
On Friday afternoon after checking into my hostel, I went for a stroll around the harbour and saw these women (mostly, I think the one in the pink is a dude), detaching the day's catch from the fishing nets.
On Saturday I went hiking again, to a much more isolated section of the park, the Sibiseonnyeotang Valley, to avoid the crowds, however because the trail was so narrow, and there were many Korean tour groups, a lot of the time it felt like I was on a conveyor belt.