Why Hiking in Korea Feels Completely Different: A Personal Look at Korean Mountains vs. the US and Australia
Why Hiking in Korea Feels Completely Different From Anywhere Else I've Been
A personal reflection on Korean mountains, trail culture, and what changed for me after hiking in the US and Australia
The first time a friend from Colorado visited me in Korea and asked if we could "go hiking on the weekend," I said sure, thinking we'd do something easy. I picked Bukhansan, because it's right there on the edge of Seoul, practically inside the city. Four hours later, we were scrambling up a granite ridge on metal handrails bolted into the rock, sweating through our shirts, surrounded by dozens of hikers in full mountaineering gear — gaiters, trekking poles, the works — even though the whole mountain is barely 836 meters tall. My friend looked at me halfway up and said, "This is not what I pictured when you said hiking."
That moment stuck with me, because it's the cleanest way I can explain the difference between Korean mountains and the ones I later hiked in the United States and in Australia. On paper, Korean mountains are small. Compared to the Rockies or the Blue Mountains, the numbers look modest. But the experience of climbing them is nothing like what those numbers suggest, and it took me years of hiking in three very different countries to understand why.
Steep, Compact, and Made of Rock
Korea is about 70 percent mountainous, but almost none of that land spreads out the way it does in the American West. There's no long, gradual approach through forest before the real climbing starts. You leave the subway station, walk fifteen minutes through a neighborhood of convenience stores and hiking gear shops, and the trail just starts — straight up. The terrain is dominated by granite and gneiss bedrock that has been weathered for millions of years, so Korean peaks tend to be steep, rocky, and full of exposed rock faces and narrow ridgelines rather than the wide, sweeping slopes I got used to hiking in Colorado.
When I hiked in Rocky Mountain National Park a few years later, I remember being almost bored by how long the approach was. You could walk for two hours through pine forest on a gentle grade and barely gain any elevation. In Korea, that same two hours might take you to the summit and back down the other side. The trails feel compressed, like someone took a much bigger mountain range and squeezed it into a smaller footprint. My legs actually hurt more after a "short" Korean hike than after a full day in Colorado, simply because of how relentless the incline is.
Temples, Not Trailheads
One thing that caught me off guard the first time I hiked in Korea was how often a Buddhist temple appears partway up the mountain, sometimes more than one. Climbing Jirisan or Gyeryongsan, you'll pass centuries-old temple buildings tucked into the folds of the mountain, incense still burning, monks going about their day as hikers pass through in bright windbreakers. It gives Korean hiking a layered feeling — you're not just in nature, you're walking through centuries of history that treated these mountains as sacred long before anyone thought of them as a weekend workout.
In the US, national park trails are managed by rangers and marked with mileage signs and interpretive placards about geology or wildlife. In Australia, on trails through the Blue Mountains or the Grampians, I mostly encountered eucalyptus forest, the occasional lookout with a plaque about Aboriginal heritage, and a strange, dry quiet that felt ancient in a completely different way — more like standing inside deep time than walking through human history. Korean mountains, by contrast, feel inhabited. There is a rhythm of people, food stalls at the trailhead, and small shrines that make the whole experience feel communal rather than solitary.
What surprised me most: Korean hikers dress for a hike up Bukhansan the way American hikers dress for a multi-day trek in the Sierra Nevada — full gear, trekking poles, sun hats, gaiters — even on a three-hour trail. At first I thought it was overkill. After a few slips on wet granite, I understood exactly why.
I ended up buying into that culture myself. My first pair of proper hiking boots in Korea was a pair of K2 boots, mostly because the shop owner near the trailhead insisted they'd grip the wet granite better than my old running shoes ever could — and he was right. A year later, after getting caught in a sudden downpour halfway up a ridge, I picked up a Kolon Sport hardshell jacket, and it's still the one I reach for whenever the forecast looks unreliable, which in the Korean mountains is often. Neither purchase was glamorous. They were the kind of practical, slightly boring gear choices that Korean hikers seem to make instinctively, and that I had to learn the hard way.
The Social Mountain vs. the Solitary Mountain
Hiking in the US and Australia, especially outside of peak season, I could go an hour without seeing another person. There's a real sense of solitude built into the culture — people go to "get away from it all." Korean hiking culture is almost the opposite. Trails are busy nearly every weekend, and hiking is deeply social. Groups of coworkers, hiking clubs of retirees in matching jackets, and families with kids all share the same narrow ridge trail, often stopping to share snacks — dried squid, boiled eggs, makgeolli rice wine — with total strangers at the summit.
I remember standing at the top of Seoraksan, completely out of breath, sweating through a lightweight Nepa half-zip that I'd bought only because it was the last one on the sale rack, and being handed a slice of orange by a stranger in her sixties who told me I "climbed well." That kind of spontaneous generosity never happened to me on a trail in Wyoming or New South Wales. It's not that hikers elsewhere are unfriendly — it's just a different relationship with the mountain. In Korea, reaching the peak together, even with strangers, feels like the whole point.
Infrastructure Built Right Into the Rock
Korean trails are engineered in a way that surprised me. Steep sections often have iron railings, chains, or even ladder-like steps bolted directly into cliff faces, something I rarely saw in the US backcountry, where trails tend to route around difficult terrain rather than climb straight through it. It makes some Korean peaks accessible to a much wider range of hikers, including older visitors, but it also changes the character of the climb. You're not picking your own line up a rock face; you're following a fixed, managed path that the mountain has essentially been built around.
By contrast, hiking in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney felt far more exposed and self-directed — narrower tracks, fewer railings, more reliance on your own footing and judgment. Neither approach is better, but they produce a completely different feeling in your body. Korean mountains often feel more like an obstacle course engineered for mass participation, while Australian and American trails I've done felt more like an invitation to figure it out yourself.
What I Took Away From All of It
After hiking across all three countries, what stays with me isn't which mountains were more beautiful — they're beautiful in completely different ways. It's how differently each culture relates to the idea of a mountain. In Korea, the mountain is a shared, almost civic space, dense with history, food, and other people, where a short distance can demand real effort because the terrain simply doesn't ease you in. In the US and Australia, the scale is bigger, the crowds are thinner, and the mountain often felt like something to be alone with rather than something to be shared.
If you ever get the chance to hike in Korea, don't judge the trail by the number on the map. A 700-meter peak here can humble you faster than a 3,000-meter one somewhere else — and somewhere around the second or third false summit, soaked in sweat and taking snacks from a stranger, you'll understand why Koreans take their small mountains so seriously.