Guryongryeong Old Coal Road: The Forgotten Pass to Gangneung
Off Map Korea English-guided walking trips through Korea. Quiet trails, hidden villages, slow moments. Driver-only, self-guided. ▸ Plan a trip The road smelled of pine resin and old diesel, and almost no one was walking it. That was my first impression of the Guryongryeong (구룡령) old road section — a narrow, compacted earth path carved into the hillside that predates any paved surface by decades. Not a recreational trail built for leisure. A working road, laid down under Japanese colonial administration to move coal and timber out of the Taebaek interior and down toward the coast. The surface under your boots is still firm in a way that tells you it was engineered to carry weight, not footsteps. Most visitors to this corner of Gangwon-do stop at the paved Guryongryeong pass (elevation 1,013 m) on National Route 56 and take a photo of the sign. That is the wrong thing to do. The old coal road — a preserved earth-and-stone trace running roughly parallel to and be...