I had been wanting to travel to the lake Northwest of Wonju city for some time. I chose a route through Suwon City Eastbound for the Yeoju area hoping I could scope out the lake and river area as well as make some observations about speed, comfort and mileage for my future journey across Asia. Due to a linguistic failure on my part, I missed the lake by about 20 miles and instead found a river swell area to the South.
The route took me through Suwon City which turned out to be a heavily congested knot of highways and expressways. It was slow going to just get through the city. I did however snap some video of HwaSeong Fortress and that was worth it. Once out of Suwon I traveled through Yongin and Ichon en route to the river near Yeoju. Along the way, somewhere outside of Yongin, I stumbled across a farming village. Despite some modern cars and farming equip, this low-walled village was an erie picture of an Aggrarian Korea of yester-century. The highlight was a seemingly untouched farmhouse replete with sod walls and timber roof in traditional Korean style. I got out of there quickly as the locals seemed to be suspicious of me.
The river itself was nice and an easy ride up local highway 333 provided some lovely views of the distant mountains. But strangest find on this day-journey was waiting for me in a somewhat more modern farming community just off of 333. It was here that I stumbled across six concrete military machine gun posts. They appeared rather recent - certainly not of Korean war days. But oddly, they were facing the South as far as I could tell. Of course I had to enter them and look inside! Check out the photos below. Note the re-bar machine gun mounts and sandbag fortifications around the bunkers.
The ride home turned ugly in Suwon as the temperature dropped and it began to rain.
Miles traveled: 85
Miles traveled: 85
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