8 Hours in Jeonju
Hanboks and Bibimbap
Often when they ask me where I live, the answer “Savannah, Georgia in the United States” doesn’t immediately mean much to them. Similar to how “Jeonju in South Korea” doesn’t mean much to me.
We expand outward.
“It’s on the East Coast. Atlanta is our capital.”
“Have you ever eaten bibimbap? The city is famous for it.”
— an excerpt from an earlier The Long Way Home post, before I knew I’d be moving to Korea but while I was teaching international students online
The first place we went when we arrived off the train in Jeonju—a quick hour and a half commute from Seoul—was the Jeonju Hanok Village. Hanoks are the traditional buildings in Korea. We wandered briefly, then went to a restaurant that served bibimbap. It’s one of my favorite meals in Korea anywhere. As a Korean student told me months before I moved to Korea, Jeonju is famous for its bibimbap, a mixed rice dish.
While at lunch, we tried Jeonju’s variation of makgeolli, a rice wine. Despite soju being the most popular alcohol in Korea, or at least the one the average American is most likely to know, makgeolli is equally iconic but less well-known internationally. Jeonju’s variation tasted like cinnamon, the perfect fall treat.
After lunch, we went over to a hanbok rental shop. Hanboks are the traditional style of dress in Korea, and you can bet if you’re near a palace, you’ll see plenty of rental shops and people dressed in them. In Seoul, if you wear a hanbok, you can get into the palaces in the city for free.
We wandered in our hanboks through the palace grounds and over to the Jeondung Cathedral across the street. I learned that during the Korean War, Jeonju was one of the few places that North Korea left untouched. That included the hanok village and the cathedral.
We stopped in a cafe afterwards, still in our hanboks. Then, we grabbed coin bread (imagine a waffle and a grilled cheese met, fell in love, and had a baby—that’s coin bread).
After coin bread, we went back to the train station and returned to Seoul. Just in time to watch a British soccer match being played with two of the most famous players in Korea.
A Budweiser and a soccer game? That, my friends, is what I like to call a perfect ending to a rather lovely day.