East coast · Gangneung, Gangwon
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Gangneung's big, easy beach — white sand, a lake behind it and a KTX from Seoul.
The east coast's most popular beach, and the easiest to reach: the KTX from Seoul gets to Gangneung in around two hours, and a short bus ride does the rest.
The sand is white and the water shelves gently, which makes it a family beach in summer. Gyeongpo Lake sits immediately behind it, ringed by a walking and cycling path that is at its best at sunset.
What else is here
Gyeongpo is the biggest beach on the east coast, but the reason to come is that it is three places at once: a six-kilometre strand, a lagoon behind it, and a six-hundred-year-old pavilion above that.
The view everyone painted
A Joseon pavilion on the rise above the lagoon, about a kilometre back from the sand. It was built to look at the moon — the local boast is that you can see it five times over from here: in the sky, on the sea, on the lake, in your cup and in your companion's eye. Listed as a national Scenic Site in 2013 together with the lake.
Getting there: A 15-minute walk up from the beach, or a short bus ride.
A lagoon, not a lake
Cut off from the sea by the sand bar the beach sits on, so it is brackish rather than fresh. There is a flat four-kilometre path right round it, and the cherry trees along the north side are one of the better blossom walks in the country in early April.
A fifteenth-century house
One of the oldest wooden residences in Korea and the birthplace of the scholar Yi I and his mother Shin Saimdang — the two faces on the 5,000 and 50,000 won notes. Ten minutes inland by bus.
Behind the sand, in the pines
There is a council-run campsite in the pine belt behind the beach, open through the summer season, with car pitches and tent decks. It books out for July and August and at weekends; outside those it is usually walk-up. Wild camping on the sand itself is not permitted.
An unlikely speciality
Gangneung has been Korea's coffee town since the 1980s, with a coffee street at Anmok beach just south of Gyeongpo and a coffee festival each autumn. It is a genuinely good reason to stay a night.
Getting there
The KTX from Seoul Station to Gangneung takes under two hours, which is the single fact that changed this coast. Before the line opened for the 2018 Winter Olympics, the east coast was a long drive; now it is a day trip, and Gyeongpo is the beach most of those day trips end at.
From Gangneung station it is about twenty minutes by local bus or ten by taxi. The beach runs roughly six kilometres, the sand is wide and shallow-shelving, and there is a proper promenade behind it with the usual run of raw-fish restaurants, convenience stores and bike hire.
The swimming season is the standard Korean one — roughly July to late August, with lifeguards, showers and parasols only in that window. Out of season it is still the best walk on this coast, and considerably nicer without the crowd.
Naksan Beach
Four kilometres of sand with a pine forest behind and a clifftop temple above.
Hajodae Beach
Turquoise water, very few people, and Korea's surf scene a few minutes up the road.
Jeongdongjin Beach
The railway station sits on the sand — and people ride the night train out for the sunrise.