Over my birthday weekend, I had a chance to visit Pocheon with my WOW Korea Supporter buddies. Pocheon is a small town 2-3 hours north of Seoul, near the demilitarized borders between South and North Korea.

How to get to Pocheon

From Dong Seoul Bus Terminal (Near to Gangbyeon Station in Seoul, not the one in Express Bus Terminal Station), take bus No. 3000 or No. 3001 and get off at Pocheon Intercity Bus Terminal. The total travel time is approximately 1.5 hours.

Pocheon Points of Interests

Sanjeong Lake (산정호수)

Lake Sanjeong was our first stop at Pocheon. The lake is situated in the valleys between Myeongseongsan Mountain, Mangbongsan Mountain, and Mangmubong Peak and the view was breath-taking even when it was cloudy.

If you want to walk around the whole lake, it will probably take around 1 to 2 hours, depending on how much you stop to take photos 🙂 We took 1 hour to get through just half the lake because we stopped a lot for photos~

Hangawon Hangwa Culture Museum (한과문화박물관 한가원)

This Hangwa Culture Museum is the first museum in Korea about traditional Korean sweets. The entrance fee costs 2000 KRW. Its first floor exhibits the history of hangwa, tools used to make it, and the various types of Hangwa and the second floor offers seasonal hangwa and serves hangwa with tea. I didn’t know that there are so many types of hangwa until I came here!

The education center runs hands-on programs offering visitors an opportunity to make hangwa and also learn about traditional tea culture. We participated in the yukgwa making (10,000 KRW) and it was pretty fun! They already fried the yukgwa and all we needed to do was to coat it with the rice crackers.

After coating it with the grains, we go to add seeds and raisins to it to decorate it.

Pocheon Herb Island (포천 허브아일랜드)

The herb island is an iconic place to visit in Pocheon. It’s not really an island so you do not need to take a ferry to get there but rather it’s like a small village. This island grows Mediterranean herbs and is thus called “Herb Island”.

There are many things to do on the island: taking lots of photos both in the day and at night, visiting the herb museum, relaxing at the aroma therapy center, eating at the herb restaurant, try out herbs beef ribs, herb bakery, shop at their herbs-related souvenir shop and more.

Our first stop on the island was the Herb Healing Center. It’s a fancy place where you can get a herbal foot therapy and back massage and also shop for various herbal beauty products.

You can also go to the Herb Restaurant and get various herb-themed food. We had the herb bibimbap that came with edible flowers. Other dishes that they serve include the herb steak, herb pork cutlet and herb spaghetti.

By the time we finished our dinner, the beautiful night lights around the island has lit up.

Bidulginang Falls (비둘기낭)

The entrance fee costs 5,000 KRW for adults. We then took the monorail up (3,500 KRW one way, 4,500 KRW two way) to the top of the hill and started walking downwards because the road up was pretty steep. It was a short 4-5 minutes monorail ride up to the top.

At the top of the hill, there is a Astronomical Science Museum. It’s like a planetarium and if you are going with children, you can bring them here. They also have a 4D ride that you can take in the planetarium. If not, just spend your time outside, enjoying the beauty and interesting structures of the valley.

If you are planning to go to these places, refer to the map below to get there:

Have fun!