Gangneung

Gangneung has been the main settlement of this coast for a very long time. Under Silla it was a provincial centre known as Myeongju, and its position at the seaward end of the passes over the Taebaek range made it the administrative and cultural capital of the eastern coastal strip, the Yeongdong. Goryeo and then Joseon governed the region from here, and the county magistrate's compound, the Confucian school and the pavilions above the lagoon date from that long period of quiet importance.

In the Joseon centuries the city became known for scholarship and for the families that produced it. Yi I, called Yulgok, one of the two towering Confucian philosophers of the dynasty, was born in 1536 at Ojukheon, the house of his mother's family; his mother, Shin Saimdang, is remembered as a painter and calligrapher and is the most celebrated woman of the era. Both appear on South Korean banknotes today, and their presence anchors the way the city presents itself. Gentry houses such as Seongyojang, built by a branch of a landed family and enlarged through the 18th and 19th centuries, survive from the same world.

Modern Gangneung grew on fishing, farming, cement and coal traffic, and later on domestic tourism to its beaches. The city and county were merged in 1995. Two projects transformed access and image: the expressway over the Daegwallyeong pass, and the KTX line opened in 2017, which cut the journey from Seoul to about two hours. In February 2018 the city hosted all the ice events of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, building the arenas that still stand on its northern edge; they served again for the 2024 Winter Youth Olympics.

Gangneung thinks of itself as a city of scholars and of ritual, and both survive in visible form. Rites for Confucius are still performed at the hyanggyo school, ancestral ceremonies continue in the old gentry houses, and the memory of Yulgok and Shin Saimdang runs through local museums, schools and festivals. The dialect of the Yeongdong coast, with its distinctive intonation, is a marker of local identity that people here keep up.

The Danoje is the city's great cultural event and one of the best-known folk festivals in Korea. Held in the fifth lunar month, it lasts for weeks in its full form: the brewing of a sacred liquor, a procession to collect a mountain spirit, shamanic ceremonies, a masked satirical drama, wrestling, swinging competitions and a market along the Namdaecheon. UNESCO inscribed it on its intangible heritage list in 2005, and it is run by local preservation associations rather than staged for outsiders.

Coffee is the modern layer of local culture. What began with vending machines on Anmok beach became a street of roasteries, then a citywide trade with its own autumn festival, and drinking coffee looking at the sea is now as much a Gangneung habit as a visitor's ritual. Sea and mountain also set the social calendar: sunrise watching at New Year, beach weekends in summer, temple visits and hiking inland in autumn.

About 210,000 people live in Gangneung, making it the largest city on Gangwon's east coast and the economic centre of the Yeongdong region. Most live in apartment districts inland from the beaches, around the centre and along the roads towards the mountains, while the coastal villages keep their older low-rise pattern. The city has held its population better than most of Gangwon, but it is ageing, and young people still leave for Seoul.

The economy rests on public administration, education and health services, fishing and food processing, farming on the coastal plain, and tourism. Catering, hotels and the beach trade employ a large seasonal workforce. Gangneung is also the transport hub of the coast: the KTX terminus, the bus terminals and the roads over the pass make it the gateway for the whole Yeongdong strip, and the Olympic arenas are used for training, skating events and concerts.

Life follows the seasons closely. Summer weekends bring heavy traffic to the coast and queues at the tofu restaurants; autumn is for the mountains; the deepest winter can bring snowfalls that close the pass and shut schools for a day. Longer-running issues include depopulation in the villages inland, the balance between beachfront development and the lagoon's ecology, and the wildfire risk that has grown with dry, windy springs.

Chodang sundubu is the city's best-known dish, and it is genuinely local: soybean curd set with clean seawater rather than a mineral coagulant, giving a soft, faintly saline tofu eaten warm with soy sauce and sesame, or simmered into a red, peppery sundubu-jjigae. The village of Chodang, between the lagoon and the sea, is lined with restaurants that have made it for generations, and the same tofu is sold to take away in tubs.

The sea provides the rest of the standard table. Squid is everywhere — grilled, dried, stuffed with rice and vegetables as ojingeo sundae, or served raw in slivers — along with flatfish, crab, pollack and shellfish bought at the ports at Jumunjin and Gangneung itself. In summer, mulhoe, raw fish in a cold sour-hot broth, is eaten along the shore, and in colder weather the fish goes into clear soups and spicy stews.

Behind the coast, Gangwon mountain food appears on most menus: makguksu, cold buckwheat noodles with vegetables and sometimes a scoop of ice; gamja-ongsimi, hand-rolled potato dumplings in a light soup; potato pancakes; corn; and the wild mountain vegetables gathered in spring. Sweet things include chodang-style tofu ice cream and the rice cakes sold in the central market. Coffee, hand-roasted and hand-poured, is the drink the city is proudest of, and local makgeolli and the ritual liquor brewed for Danoje belong to the older tradition.