Everyone thinks of South Korea as futuristic cities, traditional culture, and K-pop, but 63% of the whole country is covered in forest with 21 national parks. From central Seoul, we got on a 2-hour bus to the city of Sokcho on the east coast of Korea, where we'll be visiting Seoraksan National Park.

Compared to the big, bustling city of Seoul, this place is so peaceful. There are just a few people walking around, and it's a beautiful pastel sunset. These mountains, which we're going to be climbing tomorrow, look huge, don't they?

I don't know if I'm going to make it up there; it looks massive. There's a little temple in the distance; let's go over there and check it out.

I feel like most tourists don't come outside of the big cities in South Korea, and it just feels so peaceful being around this area. So, the actual date we are here is early October.

I think it's the 11th of October, so we're hoping tomorrow we might actually see some of the autumn colors when we're up the mountain, because apparently, it's the first place in all of South Korea that you get the autumn colors, or the fall colors, if you're from America.

The sky is looking super clear tonight, and the weather app says that it's supposed to stay this way, so fingers crossed we're going to have a beautiful, crystal-clear sunrise.

There are so many of these restaurants selling seafood and like massive crabs in these very small tanks.

Honestly, it feels a little bit disturbing, but I guess that's what they do here in the Far East.

A lot of live animals. Look at this little guy, he doesn't look too happy, does he? I'm not sure we fancy seafood tonight, but we need some big meal right now to make sure we have the energy for the morning.

We need fuel. I think we've got to get up at like 3:30 or 4:00 a.m., so probably not a lot of sleep tonight.

We've just come into the Sokcho market, and I think there's going to be lots of food for us to maybe try around here. Top blade steak, maybe we go for this.

Premium beef here, Emilia. It comes with the food. Oh my word, how good does that beef look? That looks amazing. It does look premium. All right, you go first. Should I give it a go?

Give it a go. It's so soft, so good. Is it really good beef? Well, there's a really nice sauce on it as well, and it's still super affordable. It's like $18 for both of ours, and I got the largest one, and we both got rice as well.

I am absolutely stuffed now, but that food was unreal. We'll try and put the name of the little restaurant stall down there cuz I highly, highly recommend it.

We are back in our room now, and we are getting ready for bed. Emilia, already here? It's so cold. It's cold, and we're only at sea level, so by the time we get up the mountain, it's probably going to be maybe 5° in the morning.

We're only going to have like, I don't know, 4 hours sleep, so we're going to head to bed and we'll see you very, very early. Good night.

Good morning, guys. It is currently 4:00 a.m. and we're going to try and have to call this taxi in Korean, obviously.

We're not going to understand anything. Hello, uh, a taxi at Dongyong-dong? The house? Is that booked? Yeah, I think you did very well there. I did it. Here we go. I think the taxi is here.

All right, guys. This is a little bit surprising. There are a couple of coach loads of people and the car park is pretty much full. There's so many people. I did not expect this. It is a Saturday, so maybe that's why it's busy already.

Ulsanbawi Rock, which way is that? So there was a crowd behind us, but it looks like they're doing the third tallest peak in Korea 'cause they go the other way.

Um, and that is actually in this national park. I don't think we'll be climbing that today.

It's quite funny when you do sunrise hikes 'cause you walk up, but you have no idea what your surroundings are like. We can just hear water to our right. There's probably lots of beautiful views, but We just can't see anything.

It's a bit eerie. I can barely see anything because there's a light in my eye.

The good path has ended now, and I'm pretty sure it's going to be more rough terrain. It starts off gradual and it just gets steeper and steeper and steeper until we get to the top. This hike we'll be climbing, I think it is about 600 meters in total.

We've already done some; we already done 160, but most of it will be on these stairs.

We've got ourselves a signpost. This vertical rock is one of the most representative things to see on Seoraksan Mountain. 873 meters from that sign. It sounds like it's going to be windy up there.

We've got to prepare for the cold. Right now I'm actually really warm; all I've got on is like a little light T-shirt and like a long, like, kind of thermal thing. Definitely getting a lot steeper now and our head torch keeps like cutting out the light, so we kind of get pitch darkness for a second, which is a little bit spooky, but it is getting a bit brighter in the sky.

Oh, still about 40 minutes till sunrise and I think we've already got about 200 meters of elevation left.

Then, wow, we've got our first proper view and it looks absolutely beautiful. Incredible.

It is beautiful. See the start of the golden light on the rocks on the mountains over there. I think over there is the third tallest peak.

We've had to put the hoodies back on. It's started to get a bit windy, like super windy, just all of a sudden.

It just got really windy when we went around the corner, so wrapping up ready to go. I want to take a little pause there because I want to share with you guys a little travel hack which I've been using every single day for like the past two years.

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I think we're at the top, I think we've got there, but there are so many people here. Wow, high five! We did it! We did it! Oh my god, is that the sea? Yeah, I think that's where the sun will rise.

How long have we got? Maybe about 10 minutes till the sun rises. It looks a little misty. Wow, these views are insane. I can't believe what I'm seeing right now. It's so perfect and it's so crystal clear this morning.

I feel like you can see for miles. There aren't too many tourist foreigners here at the moment; maybe they come later in the day, but this spot should be more well-known.

It is absolutely beautiful. It is pretty bright now; the sun's been up for maybe 20-30 minutes and this area is just so, so beautiful. Amelia is trying to keep warm 'cause she's getting cold.

Doing some exercise—it doesn't make sense. I've got so many layers on, but I'm still cold. And I've got the hiccups for some random reason, probably just because I ate some walnuts and I don't know.

Nuts often give me hiccups, I don't know why. Can anyone explain that? Is anyone a scientist or a hiccup expert? There we go. Because it's only early October, there aren't loads of full colors, there's definitely some, and you can really see it in the higher elevations.

But as soon as it drops down, it goes very green. But if you were maybe two or three weeks later, towards the end of October, I think this place would be like full of the full autumn colors.

We're just walking up to the kind of third viewpoint there, and all the people—Joel's got the hiccups—all the people have kind of cleared away now, and this one looks so cool.

Look at that, you can—oh sorry, I still got the hiccups—you can really get a perspective of how cool these rocks are.

They're just so unique. What's the best way to get rid of hiccups? Please leave them in the comments. We started walking down now because it was getting so cold at the top, but I have to be honest, coming up and obviously walking down as well, the staircase to get up here is incredible.

Like, probably one of the best I've ever seen because it's got like these cushioned bits, so every time you step you feel like you give a bit, so it's not like slapping your feet on concrete.

Now here we go guys, even though I said we're a little early for the full autumn colors, we've still got a little bit of red.

How beautiful is that? It's just the odd tree here and there, but generally, especially over the mountain in the distance as you probably saw earlier, there are definitely some autumn colors as you get probably above a thousand meters.

Badminton? Yeah, why have you got a badminton racket?

Train, train, train. Wow, very good. That's an odd thing to carry up, but apparently he's training. I'm a big fan of badminton, and I was playing a lot whilst I was living in Bali, so that's what I was asking.

I was like, "Want a game?" The way down has just started to flatten out a little bit more, but look what we must have passed in the dark. Look at this huge rock, it is absolutely massive.

I didn't even see it on the way up, neither, but it also has engravings and, like, I think that's traditional Chinese writing. Wow, obviously I don't know what that says.

It is definitely starting to get a little busier now; it's about 8:30, so that's when the crowds start to come. But just to remember, it is a Saturday.

weekend, and the autumn colors are starting, so it's probably quite a popular time to come. Now we're walking down in the light, we can actually see the environment, the surroundings we were walking up in, and the mountains around here are absolutely huge.

They didn't look as big when we were up that other mountain, but look at these in the distance.

These are over 1,000 meters taller than any mountain in England. As we're walking down, there's this beautiful river right through the middle of the valley, and it looks so beautiful and refreshing, and I kind of want to swim in it, but I know that that will be freezing.

We've just come across this beautiful temple and its writing, and I wanted to have a look at this because I think the top and the last three characters are traditional Chinese and the bottom three characters are Korean, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

Basically, Korean comes from traditional Chinese because they kind of use the same characters in this whole area.

So beautiful. So, I think this is drinking water. Let's just... could you translate that and make sure we're not going to give ourselves food poisoning?

Uh, can we drink? We drink? Oh, with this? Oh, oh, drink, okay. Thank you, thank you.

Right, I'll give it a taste. Hopefully it's good. That's really good. Right, let's fill up the water bottles. So, this is a Buddhist temple and it was actually made in 1647. It's been destroyed a couple of times but they remade it, and what a beautiful place to come and worship in between these mountains.

Oh wow, look at this. We might be able to have a good coffee after. Hi, two cappuccinos. Yeah, this looks amazing.

They do look good. I'm so ready for this. So, we actually had no idea how busy this national park is. Like, there are so many people here right now, and what's the time? It's about 11: a.

m., so there is a crowd here, probably because it is a Saturday. We did read online that on the weekdays it's a lot less busy. Look at everyone, everyone going on their good old weekend walks.

I don't blame them because it's only about a 2-hour journey from Seoul. It's probably where a lot of people from the city love to escape, especially when it's a bit cooler in the autumn like it is right now.

We did just try to book the cable car over there that goes up the mountain, but unfortunately, it's fully booked for the whole day because it is just so busy.

So if you are going to come on the weekend, book it in advance because it is so busy. Now, we're actually going to head back on the bus to the city of Sokcho.

To get back, we're going to try and take the bus 'cause it's going to be a lot cheaper than taking another taxi, and we are back at where we're staying.

This is the House Hostel, and it's honestly a really nice place to stay around here. It's a few hours later now, and we are on our first beach in all of South Korea, and it feels a little different, doesn't it?

It does; it feels weird, mostly because I'm wearing trainers on the beach.

Usually, we're like barefoot in our swim stuff, so we've got trousers on, shoes on our feet, and we're walking really oddly, trying not to get sand in our shoes. I think I've already got some.

Yeah, probably. We spent most of the afternoon just kind of relaxing, watching some Netflix, something we don't do lots whilst we travel, so it was nice to relax after that early and quite steep hike.

But what a beautiful way to end the day, hey? It's so beautiful and this sunset is so perfect. We've got the mountains and the city behind us and then the beach here. Coming to an area of South Korea which doesn't feel quite as touristy and is just out of the main cities feels so nice.

I'm really glad we've come here because it just gives you a different perspective of the whole country rather than just the big cities as you probably assume.

The next place we're going is Busan in the south of Korea. The next, I think it's the second biggest city, so we'll be heading there in our next video.

I think we're just going to spend the evening relaxing here, watching the sunset and then hopefully having some good food after. But anyway, thank you so much for watching and make Sure, subscribe to get more videos, and see you in the next one.

The SIDE of SOUTH KOREA no one shows you - Seoraksan National Park 🇰🇷

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