Seohaerang Trail: Walking Mudflats & Salt Farms on Korea's West Coast
.jpg)
Can You Actually Walk Beside a Working Korean Salt Farm? That was the question a guest from the Netherlands asked me the week before her trip. She had been reading about gamsam — the sun-dried sea salt that Korea's west coast has produced for over a century — and wanted to know if she could see the actual evaporation ponds, the wooden rakes, the stacked bags of grey crystal. Not in a museum. Not in a food hall. On foot, with the smell of brine in the air. The answer is yes, and the trail that makes it possible is the Seohaerang (서해랑길) — Korea's longest coastal walking route, running roughly 1,800 km down the entire west coast from Ganghwa Island in Incheon to Haengam in South Jeolla. It is the youngest of Korea's four grand coastal trails, formally opened in 2021, and it remains almost entirely unknown to foreign visitors. Which is, frankly, part of its appeal. This post focuses on the sections that gave that Dutch guest exactly what she was after: tidal flats, salt...