Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha | Wolpo Beach, Cheongha — Where They First Collided

Episode one, and a city dentist who has just wrecked her car meets a man who fixes everything and charges for none of it. Wolpo Beach is where the drama puts that first collision. It is a long, shallow-shelving stretch of sand at Yongdu-ri in Cheongha-myeon, about ten minutes from the market. Out of season it is nearly empty and there are usually a couple of surfers out; in July and August it fills up with umbrellas and tables and the water is warm enough to stay in. There are restrooms, a handful of cafés and a few restaurants behind the sand, so unlike most of this circuit you can spend a whole afternoon here without planning. Visitors in the off season sometimes report litter along the tideline before the summer clean-up. If you are here in spring, bring a bag and take some out — a fifteen-minute contribution that costs nothing and is worth more to this coast than another photograph of it. The Gongjin circuit is genuinely dispersed: market and clinic in the north, Guryongpo and the lighthouse over an hour south. Wolpo is the natural middle of the northern half and the only stop where sitting still is the point. Walk to the far end where the umbrellas stop. What the show got right about small coastal towns is that the beach is not an attraction there — it is just the edge of where people live, and on a grey weekday in March that is exactly what it feels like. Cover photo: Jukcheon Beach, Pohang, by Roadgo, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Another beach on the same coast, not Wolpo.