Wansan Chilbong and Another Jeonjucheon River Walk

I had a mostly splendid afternoon in Wansan Chilbong (also known as Wansan Park) and took another walk along the banks of the Jeonjucheon River.

One of my guidebooks lists four parks in Jeonju as “Jeonju’s Healing Places.” Before coming to Jeonju, I had electronically highlighted two of the four as the ones that looked the most enjoyable. Wansan wasn’t one of them.

But when I finished my quick, early lunch at the National Intangible Culture Centre, I pulled out my mapping app and looked at the location of the two parks I’d highlighted. Both of them seemed too far or too complicated to get to for an afternoon outing.

The closest of the listed parks was Wansan Chilbong, which the English interface of my Korean mapping app calls Wansan Park. The guidebook description of it was: “Garden with deep-pink double cherry blossoms, azaleas in spring, and red maple leaves in autumn.” That sounded pleasant. So I decided to go there.

It was a very fortuitous choice.

The mapping app showed a couple of mountains within Wansan Park, but it also showed something called Wansan Chillbong Flower Hill. That sounded like what my guidebook described. I headed to it.

It’s a relatively high hill, with lots of steps to climb.

At the top, one large section of the hillside was filled with an immense profusion of flowering trees, as opposed to a small, medium, large or venti profusion of flowering trees. The colours were brilliantly vivid, as opposed to dully vivid.

The flowers’ colours included red, pink, and lavender, along with a few yellow-flowered bushes.

This is another case where my pictures can illustrate it far better than my words can describe it. It was absolutely amazing. So, here’s a slideshow of many, but not nearly all, of the pictures I took there.

But no single picture can give you a sense of the immensity of the span of the flowers. So I took the following short video. However, keep in mind that the following video doesn’t show everything. There were some small sections away from the biggest flow of flowers on the hill. And I couldn’t pan all the way across because people would have blocked both edges of the shot.

As I said, it was incredible.

In the first paragraph, I declared that it was a mostly splendid afternoon. What made it less than entirely splendid was that it was mobbed. Despite it being early afternoon on a weekday (Tuesday), the place was packed.

I don’t know how long the trees and bushes stay in peak bloom. For all I know, it’s only a few days or a couple of weeks. People might book off work when it happens and rush to take them in. I don’t know. But, if so, it was my serendipitous, very good fortune to be there. I’d never seen anything quite like it.

I probably would have stayed longer, but for all the people. I hate crowds.

Because it’s at the top of a hill, I got a good view of Jeonju. Having, until this afternoon, confined myself to Jeonju’s centre of town, which consists mostly of low-rise and mid-rise buildings, I didn’t realize that the city has several clusters of high-rises farther out. But I could clearly see them from up there.

Coming from Toronto, I find that weird. Back home, downtown is where most of the major high-rise clusters are. Further out of the core, there are still some clusters, but there are a lot more low-rise and single-family dwelling neighbourhoods. Then again, Toronto is a relatively young city. We didn’t have much of a historical centre to protect, and what we had, we did a lousy job of protecting.

After leaving the Wansan Chilbong Flower Hill, I walked along a civilized path farther into Wansan Park in the direction away from where I entered it. There, the flowers disappeared, and the forest turned lush green.

After a piece, I saw a rough path—mostly rocks, tree roots, and soil—up the mountain. I decided to climb it a piece and turn around and come down. That’s what I decided, but I can be stubborn at times. I hiked all the way up.

At some points on the path, the slope was quite steep, and there weren’t adequate natural footholds to ensure a safe climb for people, such as me, who aren’t anywhere close to being mountain climbers, to walk up safely. There, the park faeries magically embedded logs into the soil across the path to provide the necessary foothold.

At the top, there was a substantial, oldish-looking pavilion with what looked like a very heavy, decorative roof. I marvelled at how workers must have hauled the necessary construction materials and equipment up that rugged path.

Then I walked to the other side of the pavilion. There, close to the pavilion, I saw that there was a two-lane road that formed a “U” at the peak, with the two prongs of the U going down the mountain on two sides of it.

I walked down the road on the side that looked like it would be the most productive for me.

The road is made of grooved concrete. I imagine the grooves are there so vehicles can grip it. The road has several hairpin turns to reduce its slope. There were no vehicles on it today.

Partway down, I saw another civilized pedestrian path going in a direction I thought I might want to go. I cut off and followed that.

After walking for a while, I came to a small building that looked like it might be used as a reception hall. In front, there was an asphalt patio that was canopied with brightly coloured, tightly packed lanterns hanging from wires above it.

I walked past that and came to a long set of stairs that I thought might take me toward my hotel.

I got almost to the bottom when I saw, at the lowermost point, multiple ropes tied between the handrails on either side of the stairs, blocking off the egress. Immediately beyond the ropes, there was also a high, fabric-covered temporary fence, further ensuring that no one could continue beyond the bottom of the stairs.

I walked down a few more steps, just to make sure that I hadn’t missed a gap where people could pass through. I hadn’t. Plus, there was some construction going on just beyond the stairs.

I climbed all the way back up the steps and returned along the path, back to the snaking road. It would have been nice if they had also blocked off the top of the steps or, better yet, put a multilingual warning sign at the start of the path. But, no.

As I walked down the road, I came to another set of stairs, shorter because it was farther down the road, that also went into the construction area. Those, they blocked off. Thank you very much.

I walked all the way down the road to the base of the mountain and out of Wansan Park.

Another Jeonjucheon River Walk

Wansan Park is on the other side of the Jeonjucheon River, which I’d walked along yesterday, from my hotel. I trekked the straightest line I could from where I left Wansan Park to the river.

I intersected with the river at a point that was beyond where I turned around yesterday. It wasn’t much past 3:30 in the afternoon, so I decided to stroll beside the river in the direction farther from the stretch I walked along yesterday.

It’s still a river. And it’s still lovely in that section. So I don’t have much more to say about it. The only thing I’ll add is that, out there, I got within a few blocks of one of Jeonju’s high-rise clusters. That didn’t add to the aesthetics, but it was easy enough to ignore it by focusing on the scenery along the way.

I don’t know how far the trails on either side of the river go. I didn’t come to an end.

I walked until my legs called their union representative with the International Federation of Limbs. He contacted me and told me that he had authorized my legs to stage a wildcat strike if I didn’t turn around immediately and head back to my hotel. Rather than provoke a work stoppage and possibly get stuck out there, I went back to my hotel.

In lieu of more words, please enjoy the following pictures of Jeonjucheon River.