Hiking is as much about style as it is about sport in South Korea, where about one in every three Koreans goes hiking more than once a month. Expensive walking sticks, colorful apparel and rice wine all add to the experience.
South Korea is in mid of hiking craze. Every weekend even in the worst weather hundreds of thousands take to the mountains. They come by subway, bus or cars. They wear colorful outdoor clothes and expensive hike gears. Many of them use walking sticks. Korean take it seriously.
Two third of South Korea is covered by mountains. Even the capitol city Seoul with population 25 million is surrounded by beautiful peaks. The mountains to the east are more serious.
South Korea is small you can get to any corner in about four hours. This means that in given weekend Korean reasonably choose from thousands of hikes. Some can be done in half of day others requires overnight camp outs. But non requires superhuman strength but it can be good work out as the peaks tend to be fairly steep with trails starting not far above sea-level. The tallest peak is about 6 000 feet.
