~KOREA: THE BARBED-WIRE COAST, 2012~

Hundreds of beach-goers on Haeundae Beach, Busan, on a hot summer afternoon. I'd headed straight here after bailing from my awful middle-school classroom, free as a Korean magpie. This was my start point & really, a sane man has no option in these circumstances but to keep walking - fast.

Yellow daisies grow beside the forest path leading north from Haeundae, South Korea.

A team of older people clean up the garbage left all over Songjeong Beach, Busan. Appropriate behaviour in the outdoors has a ways to go in Korea.

The faces on the yellow bag say it all. I hurried on in disgust.

A nice place to rest at day's end on the docks of a sleepy fishing hamlet. A kind local man offered his travel-agency floor for my night's accommodation.

Statuary in a roadside workshop as I continued north.

It took a while to get used to the barbed wire. It marred otherwise-pretty coastal scenery - & only got worse.

A man "sunbathes" while buried in the sand. I was cooking in my own style on the open road.

The vacation vibe ran storng all the way up the coast.

The day cools at last. Tetrapods are frequently used in Korea (as in Japan) for beach stabilisation & protection form tsunamis etc.

You see containers used everywhere in Korea as sheds, offices, etc. This was on the approach to industrial Ulsan, Korea's 6th-largest city.

Beyond the rice paddies, the industrial skyline of Ulsan.

Another curious thing about Korea: service stations always have guard dogs.

After finally getting clear of Ulsan, I trudged up a small mountain & slept on the ground right about here. All night, for some reason, hikers kept turning up. One pair stood above me talking loudly - perhaps they thought I was dead.  I disabused them of this notion with a stream of abuse.

An oriental fire-bellied toad (Bombina orientalis) I found by the roadside on my descent in the morning...

..and its fiery underside.

Lush terraced rice paddies as I neared the coast following my night in the hills.

Walking this long, curving beach of pebbles wasn't easy; I had a swim at the far end.

Another curious Korea fact: Bongo (the brand) vans are very common farmers' vehicles. And they are ALWAYS either blue or white. This is a very educational website, right?

Brought tears to my eyes too. I'm a vegetarian.

A row of enormous concrete pillars, part of a highway construction project, stretches across Korean farmland near the ancient capital of Gyeongju. I camped at the base of the pillar on the left & woke to find a farm woman glaring down at me in what looked remarkably like disgust.

A moth in weeds on a Korean roadside during my interminable trek over a winding mountain pass.

Nearing Pohang: roadside abundance.

Industrial Pohang, largest city in North Gyeongsang Province, where I spent a pleasant night.

Heading on from Pohang in the morning, watched by weird westerners.

A bright green rice paddy between hills seen from a highway I really, really regretted finding myself on. But I survived, despite feeling very conspicuous.

Chillies drying on tarpaulins in the sun - it was good to be back on the quiet roads of the coast.

I had a nice encounter on this hot afternoon when some fishermen having a barbecue on the roadside invited me to join them. Very pleasant despite our lack of a shared language.

I spent the night cowboy-camping on the beach near here. Koreans love to eat & drink in Summer at tables right there on the sand.

One of many lovely dawns on the trip.

On the road again as the sun climbs over the horizon.

I walked in deep, slushy sand along this beach.

You can probably guess what type of seafood is popular in this part of Korea.

I spent hours trudging along this highway..

Lush rice paddies stretch into the distance as I walk the endless highway in search of somewhere to camp.

Another view from the highway as night falls. Not too much later, I found a secluded spot near the beach to pitch my tent.

Mornings like this make all the struggle worthwhile.

A fellow traveller, casualty of the unforgiving road.

An overgrown shrine set back from a Korean road, with wild rose of Sharon - Korea's national flower - blooms in the foreground.

The view up the rocky Korean coast from an abandoned pillbox. Hundreds of these still stand on the rocky coastline.

A barbed-wire fence with a distant pillbox vicibile on a rocky outcrop.

I feared they'd stop and ask my purpose, feeling very conspicuous & slightly out of place among all that wire. But they kept on going - fortunately, as I had no purpose.

A view of a Korean coastal settlement & hotel overlooking the sea at dawn.

A steep road brought me to this excellent viewpoint, where I met a female walker going the other way & a young school student doing a long multi-day trip on his bicycle.

A view of the elevated highway cutting through mountains south of Samcheok, South Korea. That wasn't my road, fortunately - far too risky.

Morning views in Gangwon, my final province.

Garlic is more than a key ingredient in Korean cuisine - it's virtually compulsory.

I spent the rainy night in this harbour city (n a hotel, not the armchair).

Right before one of the scariest tunnel-walks I've done - & I've done a lot. It was long, there was considerable traffic & there was no pedestrian walkway.

A huge hotel shaped like a cruise ship & a smaller pirate ship on the southern end of Jeongdongjin Beach at dusk.

Distant taillights on a quiet Korean road at dawn near Yangyang.

One of several abandoned hotels on the north-eastern Korean coast.

A Korean surfer stands at the water's edge at dusk, a rare occasion for me of asking permission to take a stranger's picture.

A group of distant soldiers patrols a breakwater at dawn after I'd spent a rough night on a noisy bus-stop floor.

A creek heading inland from the Korean coast just south of Sokcho, dawn. I was limping badly at this point, with blisters aggravated by hot roads & days of walking with wet, sandy socks.

And after all that walking, I was on a return bus back to Busan within a few hours! In Autumn, I returned to Sokcho in comfort - by bus (cheap in Korea) to hike the beautiful Seorak-San National Park inland from the city.