Korea's Coast on Foot

Korea built a walking trail around its own coastline — literally around it. The Korea Trail (코리아둘레길) links four separate routes into one loop tracing almost the entire perimeter of the peninsula: Haeparang-gil (해파랑길) along the east coast, Namparang-gil (남파랑길) along the south, Seohaerang-gil (서해랑길) up the west, and the DMZ Peace Trail across the northern border zone. Together they run roughly 4,500 km across about 250 numbered courses — nobody is expected to walk all of it, and almost nobody does.

The point where two of them meet is worth knowing about on its own. Namparang-gil ends and Seohaerang-gil begins at Ttangkkeut Tower (땅끝탑) in Haenam, South Jeolla — a 10-meter monument marking the mainland’s actual southernmost point, at 34°17'32" N. Ttangkkeut literally means “land’s end.”

The four, briefly

Haeparang-gil (해파랑길)

East coast · Busan to Goseong · 750 km, 50 courses · beaches and coastal cliffs

Namparang-gil (남파랑길)

South coast · Busan to Haenam · 1,470 km, 90 courses · islands and fishing ports

Seohaerang-gil (서해랑길)

West coast · Haenam to Incheon · 1,800 km, 109 courses · tidal flats and sunsets

DMZ Peace Trail

Border zone · roughly 200 km | history over scenery

What each guide in this section covers

Not a ranked list — each piece answers a different question, the way the Hiking section does for mountains.

• The Seohaerang Trail — why the west coast is the mudflat one, what Course 1 out of Ttangkkeut Tower actually looks like, and where the trail concentrates around Taean
• The Namparang Trail — why the south coast is the island one, the national park it’s built around, and where it concentrates around Geoje
• Getting In the Mud — a beginner’s guide to Korea’s tidal-flat experiences, and the safety rule (tide speed, not distance) that actually matters
• Muuido and the West Coast Beaches — the one beach on this list you can reach from Seoul without a car
• Korea’s Coast in Stone — three rock formations, one on each coast, and which one you can reach without a car

Before you pick a course

The west coast is not the postcard beach coast — that is Busan and the southeast. What it offers instead is tidal range: sand that becomes a kilometer of exposed flat at low tide, and a sunset that lands directly over open water rather than another peninsula. The south coast, by contrast, barely has open coastline at all — it’s islands, bays and fishing ports the whole way, built around Hallyeohaesang National Park. Whether that is the trip you want is worth deciding before you book anything.

Checked 5 September 2026. Korea Trail (코리아둘레길) distance, course counts and the four constituent trails from Durunubi, the official trail platform run by the Korea Tourism Organization. Ttangkkeut Tower’s coordinates and its role as the Namparang-gil terminus / Seohaerang-gil start are corroborated across Korean travel reporting on the site. Individual trail, safety and transit detail is sourced and dated separately on each page in this section as it publishes.