Five Bike Paths Through the Heart of Korea

Korea has far more certified cycle route than the Seoul–Busan line most visitors ride. This guide covers five of the paths that sit off it, grouped into the three trips they naturally make.

• Bukhangang 북한강 — Seoul to Chuncheon. 116 km ridden, in one day or two.
• Ocheon 오천 + Geumgang 금강 — Goesan to Gunsan. 306 km, in three days or six.
• Yeongsangang 영산강 + Seomjingang 섬진강 — Mokpo to Gwangyang. 294 km, in three days or five.

Each trip is planned twice: once for riders who want the distance, once for riders who want the country. Every single day carries its own Kakao Map route as a link, a QR code and a typed-out URL, so it works on a phone, in a PDF reader, or printed and folded into a jersey pocket.

Where to sleep, in full. Motels, minbak (민박), pensions, guesthouses, jjimjilbang, a temple stay under Jirisan and campgrounds — each with real prices, and honest about how much thinner the options get inland. How to get a minbak that is on no booking site, in two Korean sentences. And the two places on these routes where you genuinely must book ahead.

Camping the river paths. Riverside campgrounds beside all five rivers, where the rules actually stand on river parks, Han River parks and national parks, the spring fire ban, and the three stretches with no shop for 25 km.

What it costs. Per day, three ways — camping, motels, comfortable — plus the buses that are the real expense on a point-to-point trip.

What you will see alive. Herons on every river, the Baikal teal murmurations at the Geumgang estuary in winter, otters on the Seomjingang, water deer on the levees, and the boar to take seriously.

Every day says where to sleep. All twenty of them name the town, what kind of beds are in it and what to eat there — from the pension strip at Cheongpyeong to the city-run hanok rooms at Gongju and the templestay above Gurye.

Along the Way, trip by trip. Three pages of the places worth getting off the bike for: Dumulmeori and Nami Island on the Bukhangang; the Jikji, two Baekje capitals and Gunsan's colonial quarter on the Geumgang; Damyang's bamboo, the gochujang jars at Sunchang, the village where Korean cheese was invented and the plum blossom at Gwangyang on the Seomjin.

Also inside: how the distances you actually ride differ from the signed path lengths and why; how bicycles travel on Korean subways and intercity buses; the one place on the southern trip where the route breaks and you take a bus between two rivers; the Baekje fortress and royal tombs sitting beside the Geumgang path; how these routes fit into the national certification passport and the Grand Slam; and a page of things worth knowing — the closed railway the Bukhangang path is built on, why Ocheon is named after five streams, and what Gunsan kept that the rest of Korea demolished.