Yongin

Yongin's name dates from 1413, when the Joseon administration merged two older counties, Yonggu and Cheoin, into one. The district lay on the main road south from the capital, and its hills carry the earthworks of much older forts; the fortress on Seokseongsan above the county town is one of several that guarded the route. In 1232, during the Mongol invasions, Korean forces defeated a Mongol army at Cheoin fortress here, killing its commander — a rare success recorded in the chronicles and still marked locally.

Because the county sat within a day's ride of the capital, many officials and scholars kept estates and family burial grounds in these hills, and a number of Confucian academies and shrines were built for them; the tomb of the late-Goryeo scholar and statesman Jeong Mong-ju is in the city. The area remained agricultural into the 20th century, growing rice in the valleys and keeping livestock on the slopes, with a market town at Cheoin and villages scattered through the hills. The Korean War brought heavy fighting to the corridor south of Seoul, and the countryside emptied and refilled.

The transformation came late and fast. Samsung completed its first semiconductor plant at Giheung in 1983, Everland grew from a small farm-based park founded in 1976 into the country's largest theme park, and the Korean Folk Village opened in 1974. From the 1990s new towns were built at Suji, Giheung, Dongbaek and Sanghyeon for people priced out of Seoul, and the population climbed past a million within about two decades, the fastest growth recorded by any city in the country.

For most Koreans the city means a day out. Everland's rides, zoo and seasonal gardens, the water park beside it and the Korean Folk Village are fixtures of childhood and of school trips, and the Folk Village in particular has shaped how traditional rural life is pictured: its farmhouses, ancestral rites, tightrope walking and farmers' percussion bands are used constantly as backdrops for television and film. The drama sets in the hills nearby have the same role for historical series.

Underneath that is an older Confucian landscape of academies, shrines and family burial grounds, kept up by clan associations that still hold rites in spring and autumn. Jeong Mong-ju, remembered for his loyalty to the falling Goryeo dynasty, is the best known of the figures buried here, and the city treats these sites as part of its identity rather than as attractions.

Day-to-day culture is that of a young commuter city. Suji and Giheung are full of families with school-age children, and the density of cram schools, sports centres and children's cafés reflects it; several universities add a student population in Giheung and Cheoin. Manners follow capital-area norms — age governing forms of address, two hands for giving and pouring, shoes off indoors — and a great deal of social life happens in the large roadside cafés and barbecue restaurants that line the roads between districts.

About 1.1 million people live in Yongin, which makes it one of the largest cities in Gyeonggi province, and the population is still rising. Most live in apartment complexes in the western new towns of Suji and Giheung, which are effectively suburbs of Seoul; the eastern district of Cheoin keeps farmland, reservoirs, small factories and villages, and the difference in feel between the two halves of the city is considerable.

Semiconductors dominate the economy. Samsung's Giheung campus has been a centre of memory-chip manufacturing since the 1980s, a supply chain of equipment and materials firms has grown up around it, and further large chip investments have been announced in the city, with associated construction on a considerable scale. Alongside that are the resort and tourism businesses in the east, several universities, logistics warehouses near the motorways, and farming that supplies Seoul's markets.

The rhythm is set by commuting and by school. Trains and buses towards Gangnam fill early, the main roads through Suji are slow at both ends of the day, and evenings belong to cram schools and family restaurants. Weekends divide between the parks and the hills. The recurring issues are transport — road and rail capacity has lagged behind the pace of building — along with housing costs, the loss of farmland and green hills to development, and the pressure that new industrial complexes put on water and power supplies.

Yongin eats as the capital area does, but it keeps a country strand of its own. The Baegam district in the south-east is known nationally for sundae, blood sausage made with glass noodles and vegetables, steamed and served sliced with a bowl of soup and a plate of offal; several restaurants there have been in business for decades and the dish is treated as the city's speciality. Soybean cooking is the other rural tradition, with handmade tofu eaten warm with kimchi, doenjang stew, and cold soybean noodle soup, kongguksu, in the hottest weeks.

The hills around the old centre are lined with restaurants serving grilled or steamed duck with herbs, bossam of boiled pork, and galbi grilled over charcoal — places built for family outings by car, often with gardens. The Jungang market in Cheoin supplies the everyday food: hand-cut kalguksu noodles, dumplings, fried snacks, side dishes and seasonal vegetables, with a five-day market that brings in growers from the surrounding villages.

In the new towns the food is suburban and international — fried chicken with beer, pizza, pasta, bakeries and dessert cafés clustered around the stations — and the large roadside cafés that Gyeonggi is known for serve coffee and cake in glass buildings with terraces over the hills. Rice wine and soju accompany the country dishes, and makgeolli made in the province is widely sold.