Sokcho

Sokcho grew from a scatter of fishing villages on a stretch of coast with two lagoons and no natural deep harbour. It was a minor place through the Joseon period, the seaward end of a poor mountain district whose links ran north and south along the coast rather than west over the Taebaek passes. Under Japanese rule the port was developed for the fishing fleet and used to ship iron ore, and roads improved the connection over the passes to the interior.

The division of the peninsula at the 38th parallel in 1945 left Sokcho just north of the line, and for five years it was administered from the North. The Korean War changed that: the armistice of 1953 fixed the military demarcation line well to the north of the town, and Sokcho became a South Korean border port. Thousands of people from Hamgyong province, who had moved south during the fighting and expected to return within weeks, settled on the sandspit by the harbour channel. The quarter they built became Abai Village, and their cooking became the town's best-known food.

Post-war Sokcho lived on pollack, squid and crab, and on the naval and military presence that the border brought. It was made a city in 1963. As the pollack disappeared from these waters the fishing economy narrowed, and tourism took its place: Seoraksan was designated a national park in 1970, the motorway and improved roads from Seoul cut the journey to a few hours, and the town rebuilt itself around walkers, beachgoers and seafood. Apartment towers have gone up along the shore, and the population has held roughly steady while much of inland Gangwon has emptied.

Sokcho's identity rests on two things that meet here, the mountains and the sea, and on a third that is particular to it — the northern families who make up a large share of the population. Abai village keeps dialect words, ancestral rites and dishes from Hamgyong, and the idea of a temporary settlement that became permanent runs through the town's sense of itself. The hand-pulled ferry across the channel, worked by passengers hauling on a cable, is the emblem of that quarter and appears in films and television dramas set here.

The mountain side of local life is equally strong. Seoraksan has been a Buddhist landscape for more than a thousand years, with Sinheungsa and smaller hermitages in its valleys, and temple visits, mountain hiking and the autumn foliage season structure the year for residents as much as for visitors. Older customs of the east coast survive too, including rites for a safe catch and the New Year habit of gathering on the shore before dawn.

Day to day, manners are those of provincial Korea: age determines forms of address, elders are served first, and hospitality is expressed through food. The wider region's shamanic and folk traditions, best known from the Gangneung Danoje festival down the coast, are part of the cultural background here, and Sokcho people follow the fortunes of Gangwon's teams and the fishing season with equal attention.

About 80,000 people live in Sokcho, in a narrow strip of town squeezed between the sea and the park boundary. It is one of the few places in Gangwon whose population has not fallen sharply, because visitors and retirees have replaced some of those who left; even so, the town is ageing, and school rolls and the fishing fleet have both shrunk. Most residents live in apartment blocks near the lagoons and the coast road, with the older single-storey neighbourhoods surviving around the harbours.

The economy is fishing, food processing, construction and above all tourism. Squid, crab, flatfish and shellfish are landed at the two ports, and dried and salted products are made and sold in the markets; hotels, condominiums, restaurants and the cable car employ many people seasonally. The military is a steady presence, as it is everywhere near the border, and a share of the working population commutes to Yangyang or Gangneung.

The rhythm is seasonal to an extreme degree. Summer and the autumn foliage weeks bring traffic jams on the coast road and queues at the market stalls; February and March are slow and cold, when the restaurants run on local custom. Recurring concerns are the wildfires that have swept this coast in dry springs, the decline of catches, winter storms that damage harbour works, and the pressure that peak weekends put on parking, water and waste.

The dish most associated with Sokcho is abai sundae, a fat sausage of pig intestine packed with rice, vegetables and seasoning, steamed and sliced — a Hamgyong recipe carried south by refugees and now cooked in the small kitchens of Abai village. Beside it is ojingeo sundae, squid stuffed with the same mixture, cut into rounds, dipped in egg and fried. Both are eaten with a chilli and soy sauce and taste more of the northern provinces than of the south.

The sea supplies the rest. Squid in all forms is the town's staple, fresh, dried or seasoned; crab, flatfish, sea squirt and shellfish are sold at the quayside and eaten raw as hoe within sight of the boats. In summer comes mulhoe, raw fish and vegetables in a cold, sharp chilli broth poured over ice, a speciality of this coast. Winter brings soups of pollack, the fish that built the local fleet, including dried hwangtae from the racks in the mountain valleys inland and the clear haejangguk-style broths eaten in the cold.

The market is the other food landmark: alleys of dried-fish sellers and a much-photographed row of stalls selling dakgangjeong, crisp fried chicken tossed in a sticky sweet-hot glaze, which visitors carry home by the box. Gangwon staples appear everywhere too, from gamja-ongsimi potato dumplings to buckwheat makguksu, and local makgeolli and soju are drunk with the seafood.