Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Ilsan is a place of superlatives. Among other things it boasts the largest artificial lake
in South Korea, at the heart of an expansive park crisscrossed with biking and jogging
trails, and one of the biggest concert venues outside the capital, the Goyang Aram Nuri Arts
Center. As well as the standard department stories it has the atypical Lafesta and Western
Dom complexes, semi-outdoor shopping and entertainment plazas that serve as Goyang's
de facto downtown and reverberate every night with the sounds of revelry from dozens of
hip bars and restaurants.
Ilsan is also almost unique in offering a sizable number of Western-style detached two-
and three-story homes, most only around one or two years old and clustered near Jeong-
balsan Mountain just northeast of the Lake Park. Designed in a variety of styles, these offer
a sizable amount of space and usually private yards to putter around in, but when the neigh-
borhood is likened to the Beverly Hills of South Korea, you know they're not going to come
cheap. Prices for houses in this area hover at around 1 billion won, with rents starting at 3
million won per month with deposits of 20 million won or more for nicer units.
Compared to this, upscale apartment developments such as the We City Ilsan Chai look
like a bargain, with purchase prices starting at around 750 million won and rents averaging
around 1.5 million won for a two-bedroom unit in the 70-square-meter range, usually with
a minimum deposit of 10 million won.
UIJEONGBU AND DONGDUCHEON
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These cities, just north of Seoul on the metropolitan rail line and not far apart, are two of the
final sizable settlements before the inter-Korean border and represent one of South Korea's
first lines of defense against the North, a situation that's emphasized by the heavy local and
U.S. military presence in the area. In decades past this meant they were known largely for
Cold War-style armed tension and the raunchy nightlife that seems to accompany legions
of enlisted men around the world, but as the threat of imminent conflict between the two
Koreas has subsided, more Koreans and nonmilitary foreign nationals have moved in, with
the population of the area nearly doubling over the past decade.
While physically unremarkable, residents like these towns because they're of a manage-
able size—Uijeongbu has a population of around 400,000, and Dongducheon just a quarter
of that—and because they're just an hour outside of Seoul but far closer to nature. Dong-
ducheon is bordered on the north by Soyo-san, a magnificent range of craggy peaks and
waterfalls that delights hikers year-round. And outside the cramped areas surrounding the
train and bus stations—it's a major transport hub—Uijeongbu has some very sedate neigh-
borhoods surrounded by mountains and bisected by streams.
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