Girls in delicate but colourful hanbok are walking, chatting and laughing all around me as I wander through the streets of Jeonju Hanok Village in the heart of Jeonju city, admiring the traditional South Korean houses known as hanok. Were it not for the occasional bleeps from smartphones and the horns of cars, I would have no trouble believing I had travelled back through time to the Joseon period.

Jeonju – the name means “perfect area” – is the capital of North Jeolla Province and just two hours from Seoul by KTX train. Located in the fertile Honam plain, Jeonju has been blessed with wonderful produce for centuries. The city is famous for its history, superb quality hanji (traditional handmade Korean paper) and authentic dishes, especially Jeonju bibimbap (mixed rice) and kongnamul gukbap (bean sprout soup with rice).

“In the old days, villages naturally formed around the Jeonju fortress. After the signing of the Japan-Korea Treaty in 1905, Japanese merchants wanted to destroy the fortress and invade the residential area. The Yangban (the nobility in the Joseon Dynasty) were not having that and so started to establish Hanok villages all over Pungnam-dong and Gyo-dong districts and that was the beginning of the Hanok Village we see today,” our guide explains.

Surrounded by some 700 hanoks, Jeonju’s Jeondong Cathedral, a mixture of Romanesque and Byzantine styles, stands out proudly in the crowd. Designed by Priest Poinel, who also designed Myeongdong Cathedral in Seoul, the cathedral was completed in 1914. Built in the place where the first Catholic martyr, Yun Ji-chung died in 1791, it is the largest and oldest western-style structure in Jeollanamdo and Jeollabukdo provinces.

“Jeonju is also regarded as the spiritual capital of the Joseon Dynasty because the Yi royal family originated here,” says Hong, our translator, as we make our way to Gyeonggijeon Shrine, the landmark of Jeonju Hanok Village.

The shrine houses the portrait of King Taejo, the founder of the Joseon Dynasty. The structure was partially destroyed during the Japanese invasion of Korea (1592-1598), and the existing structure was remodelled in 1614.

“Look at the portrait of King Taejo and you would see that unlike other kings who wore red, he wore a blue robe.

“According to oriental philosophy, the whole universe consists of five directions: east, west, south, north and centre. Each direction has its own colour and meaning. The east represents the beginning and the colour of the east is blue. King Taejo was the first king of Joseon dynasty so he wore a blue robe,” Hong explains.

“The shape of the hat also has a significant meaning. King Taejo used the cicada wing as the model for the officer’s hat. The cicada lives humbly underground for most of its life and it never harms the crops. King Taejo wanted to remind all state officers to be like the cicada: humble and always kind to the people.”

Apart from food, Jeonju’s proudest legacy is hanji, traditional handmade paper. In the past it was the product of the region and offered as homage to the king. Hanji is more durable than paper from other countries because the Koreans used two main materials: mulberry and hibiscus.

“From November to February, we would harvest year-old paper mulberry plants then steam them for easy peeling. We skinned the bark and boiled it in water mixed with ashes from bean or buckwheat stems for 4 to 5 hours before putting it in flowing water for at least 10 hours. Then we bleached it by placing it in water under the sun for 5 to 7 days,” explains an officer at the Hanji Industry Support Centre.

“To get the fibre, we placed the cleaned bark on a flat stone board and pounded it for an hour. We then mixed the fibres with water and the mucus from the hibiscus plant to make it more durable. The fibres were later strained through a bamboo screen, which was shaken back and forth and left to right to create a criss-cross pattern of fibres. The pulp was then dried on a wooden panel. In the old days, we would press it with heavy stones to squeeze the water out, and place the papers in a warm room or on the heated floor to dry. The dried sheet would be pounded to make the surface smoother and more lustrous.”

The laborious process makes hanji the most durable paper in the world. Indeed, the oldest text on hanji, Muggujungwang, is still well preserved and dates back about 800 years.

Koreans had various ways to use hanji. They used it to cover their doorframes to control the room temperature, and because of its high quality and it durability, the upper classes wrote on it to record various documents. Some would paste many layers of hanji onto a pre-made frame to make sewing baskets and trunks.

As I painstakingly glue the coloured hanji to the paper tray, my mind drifts to the famous Jeonju bibimbap, a dish believed to be based on a royal court recipe from the Joseon Dynasty.

A surreptitious glance at my watch tells me that it won’t be long before we can really get into the heart of Jeonju by sampling its cuisine.

IF YOU GO

< Thai AirAsia X (www.AirAsia.com) flies daily between Bangkok Don Mueang to Seoul Incheon.

Perchd on the Southeastern-most tip of the Korean peninsula, Busan is South Korea’s second largest city and with a population of more than 3.5 million, every bit as cosmopolitan as Bangkok.

Yet after three days of travelling around Japan’s rural Kyshu region as part of a cooperative agreement on tourism between Fukuoka and Busan, the frantic pace of life comes as something of a shock.

A flight of less than an hour separates the quiet from the chaos and after setting our internal clocks back to life in the fast lane, we are ready to experience the city’s culture and charms.

Over the years, Busan has expanded to include the nearby satellites of Gimhae and Yangsan and we are thus able to take in Haeundae beach, the country’s most famous strip of shoreline, a delightful temple by the sea as well as the small coastal town of Tongyeong, home to the film sets of several Korean dramas.

Busan – which was romanised as Pusan prior to 2000 – is probably best known to Thais for its film festival, which first saw the light of day at in central Nampo-dong area before moving to Haeundae beach. The BIFF square at Nampo-dong is still home to a multiplex theatre where some of the screenings are held and also hosts such activities as printing the hands of actors and filmmakers.

Nearby is Gukje Market, which offers everything from fresh produce to fashion as well as food stalls while across the way is Jagalchi Market, famed for its marine and dried fish products as well as its restaurants.

The markets are also popular locations for filming and regularly draw movie and drama fans. The local shopkeepers make the most of this unexpected tourism boom and we are amazed to see a large queue in front of shop in crowded Gukje Market, with the owner proudly pointing to its image in the poster for “Ode to My Father”.

Not far away is Gamcheon Culture Village, which is formed by some 1,000 houses built staircase-fashion on the foothills of a mountain.

During the Korean war thousands of refugees of the Taegeuk-do religion fled to Busan fearing persecution from the communist North. Housed at first in the city centre, they were later moved to Gamcheon where they built homes from scrap iron, wood and rocks. It remained one of city’s poorest communities until 2009, when the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism stepped in, organised art projects to restore the village, hired artists to paint murals and offered incentives to artists to move there and run galleries and shops. Several descendants of the original settlers still live at Gamcheon and have profited from the thousands of visitors who pour into the village every day.

A museum at the entrance relates the history of the residents but unfortunately the information is all in Korean. Guides can however be hired for a tour of the village itself and are happy to take visitors around to admire the trick art, sculptures, and even buildings remodelled around a singular art concept including a Book Cafe shaped like a giant coffee mug,

Art projects turning old neighbourhoods into tourist attractions are popular all over South Korea and one of the most successful is Dong Pirang village in Tongyeong city – about two hours from Busan.

While Gamcheon tends to be more popular among local and foreign visitors, Dong Pirang and Tongyeong attract mainly Koreans obsessed with TV drama locations.

Dong Pirang is much smaller and more peaceful than Gamcheon village. The tiny homes stand roof to roof, with narrow alleyways zigzagging up to the hill.

Dong Pirang embraced the art project before Gamcheon when it was threatened with demolition. A civic group held a mural contest in 2006 and offered a grand prize of 30 million won (Bt915,000)

Thirty-six young artists came from all over the country to paint the walls of the homes and alleys in the neighbourhood during the week of the contest. More art projects have since been organised with artists from other countries, Thailand included, also coming to create their murals.

The houses have appeared in such TV dramas as “Innocent Man” starring Song Jung-ki and Moon Chae Won and “Padam Padam” with Jung Woo Sung and Han Ji Min.

The entrance to Dong Pirang is on the hill leading up from Gangguan Harbour, home to a thriving fish market, shops and restaurants.

The Hallyeosudo Landscape cable car to Mt Mireuksan is just 15 minutes away and well worth overcoming vertigo for the magnificent view of hundreds of small islands. This too has appeared on national TV, lending itself as the background for the teenage drama “School 2015: Who are you?”

From Tonyeongghang Harbour, Korean drama fans can pop over to Jangsa Do aka Camellia Island, a trip of about 50 minutes by boat. The island is owned by a millionaire and has been turned into a beautiful park planted with camellias or silver magnolias and home to both a maze and herb garden. The owner has faced no problems in popularising his tourist destination, having invited the famous TV programme “Running Man” to shoot here as well as the hit drama “The Man Who Came from the Star”.

BEAUTIFUL BUSAN

< For more information about the destinations, visit http://english.visitkorea.or.kr, Teongyong city at http://eng.tongyeong.go.kr/ and http://english.busan.go.kr/.