Jeonju

Jeonju sits on a fertile plain that has been settled since Baekje times. Its first moment of importance came around 900, when the general Gyeon Hwon renamed it Wansan and made it the capital of Later Baekje, a state that lasted until Goryeo absorbed it in 936. Under Goryeo and then Joseon the city became the administrative centre of the Jeolla provinces, seat of the provincial governor and the collection point for the rice of the richest farmland in the country.

Its deeper claim is dynastic. The Yi family that founded the Joseon dynasty in 1392 traced its ancestry to Jeonju, and the new state treated the city as a kind of second home: the shrine of Gyeonggijeon was built in 1410 to hold the portrait of King Taejo, and an official archive here preserved the dynastic records through the invasions of the 1590s, when copies kept elsewhere were destroyed. The city walls were rebuilt after those wars, though only the southern gate, Pungnammun, still stands.

Jeonju was also a centre of unrest. Korean Catholics were martyred here in 1791 and 1801, commemorated by the church built on the site, and in 1894 the peasant army of the Donghak rebellion took the city before negotiating with the government. Under Japanese rule Korean merchants and landowners built the dense quarter of tiled houses that is now the hanok village, as Japanese businesses took over the commercial streets. Industrial growth after the war went largely elsewhere, and from the 1990s the city rebuilt its fortunes on its own past, restoring the hanok quarter and marketing its cooking and crafts.

Jeonju treats tradition as a working inheritance rather than a museum piece. It is the home ground of pansori, the epic storytelling song performed by a single singer and a drummer, and the city has long staged competitions for singers; the modern Sori festival, founded in 2001, grew from that tradition. Traditional drumming, dance and the making and playing of Korean instruments are taught here, and the provincial arts scene is unusually strong for a city of this size.

Craft is the other strand. Hanji, the tough mulberry-bark paper made from local trees, has been produced around Jeonju for centuries and is used for window screens, boxes, fans and even clothing; fan-making, lacquerware and traditional wine brewing are practised alongside it. UNESCO recognised the city as a City of Gastronomy in 2012, and Jeonju has built much of its identity on being taken seriously about food.

Modern culture sits comfortably beside this. The international film festival each spring fills the downtown cinema street with independent films and turns a provincial centre into a young, crowded place for ten days. Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors, one of the most successful football clubs in the country, draws large crowds. Jeolla people have a reputation across Korea for hospitality and plain speaking, and the regional dialect, with its distinctive sentence endings, is instantly recognisable.

About 640,000 people live in the city of Jeonju, making it the capital and largest city of Jeonbuk State, the province called North Jeolla until 2024, though it is a good deal smaller than Gwangju to the south-west. Most residents live in apartment blocks in the newer western and northern districts rather than anywhere near the tiled roofs that tourists come to see; the hanok village itself has a small and shrinking resident population.

Government, education and health are the main employers: the provincial administration, Jeonbuk National University and several hospitals. Jeonju never industrialised on the scale of other Korean cities, and its manufacturing runs to food processing, paper and printing. Tourism has become a major part of the economy, and with it the familiar strains — rising rents in the historic quarter, shops turning into souvenir and snack outlets, and residents complaining about noise and parking on the lanes.

The rhythm of the city is unhurried. Markets open early and the bean-sprout soup shops with them, students fill the streets around the university in the evening, and the stream paths are busy with walkers and cyclists at dusk. Weekends bring a heavy influx of domestic visitors, many of them in rented hanbok, which the city both depends on and debates. Like the wider region, Jeonju is ageing, and the loss of young people to Seoul is a constant subject of local politics.

Jeonju's reputation rests first on bibimbap. The local version is made with rice cooked in beef broth, topped with a wide range of separately seasoned vegetables, bean sprouts, seasoned raw beef or a fried egg, and mixed at the table with red chilli paste; what marks it out is the number and quality of the small side dishes that arrive with it. The same generosity defines the full Jeolla table, hanjeongsik, where a single order covers the surface with grilled fish, braised meat, salads, pickles and several kinds of kimchi.

The everyday dish is kongnamul gukbap, a soup of bean sprouts and rice, sharpened with kimchi and squid and eaten early in the morning or late at night. Other local staples include hot pots of pork and vegetables, thin-sliced raw beef served with pear, and the sweet-and-sour dishes of the plains. Street food in the hanok lanes runs to skewers, fried croquettes and rice cakes, and the bakeries near the village are known nationally for pies of biscuit, marshmallow and chocolate.

Drink matters here too. Moju, a mild spiced brew made by simmering rice wine with herbs and ginger, is a Jeonju speciality often drunk with the morning soup, and the city's makgeolli alleys have their own custom: order a kettle of rice beer and the table fills with free dishes, more of them with every kettle. Nambu Market is the place to see the raw materials, and its night market draws crowds in the warmer months.