Lincoln Peterson

If you are living or travelling near Yangpyeong, you should know about the Wild Vegetables Festival (산나물). It’s so long in English, so I’ll just call them Sannamul.

In Korea there are many different wild vegetables that (mostly older) people like to eat straight from the ground. It surprised me when I was on a walk with my coworker and she suddenly started picking some plants off of the ground and eating them!

In Korean, 산 (san) means mountain and 나물 (namul) means edible greens. Because I was reading the name literally, I thought it just referred to plants growing in the mountains. But in this case, mountain (山) is used to mean wild.

In Yangpyeong, the festival is held on the last weekend (Friday to Sunday) in April. But you can check on the official website to check the exact date.

The festival is in Yongmun. I would recommend taking the subway to Yongmun station. On the day of the festival, there is a shuttle bus you can take to Yongmun. You need to be careful, because it is absolutely packed and you might not fit in the bus. Also, it is very difficult to park, so I wouldn’t recommend taking a car.

There are a lot of free, fun things to do in the festival. But you will need to know Korean to take part in most of them. So if you can’t speak Korean, you should bring along a Korean friend. Otherwise, it’s still fun to enjoy the atmosphere of the festival.

I got a free package of Yugwa and my girlfriend got some free honey for participating in an activity. We also got free Sannamul plants, but we both got the same one (Chamnamul). Sadly, I was not able to keep it healthy and it died before I could eat it.

Even small Korean towns have mascots, and Yangpyeong’s mascot is called Yangchungi. If you come to the wild vegetable festival, you can definitely meet Yangchungi and take a picture. In Korean, Yang means sheep, so Yangpyeong’s mascot of course has to be a sheep.

Also, if you come all the way to Yongmun, you can also hike the path. Going to the top is very difficult, but there are many paths that are possible to do! If you take the bus up to the festival, you would be in 용문산관광단지. I wouldn’t recommend going all the way to the top unless you are prepared…

Anyways, that’s all for now. See you next time.