Hiking as a Pastime

The food is only one part of the equation on maintaining a healthy lifestyle. The geography of Korea is 70 percent mountainous. What do people do when their country is covered with mountains? They go hiking! Because hiking is such a popular sport, Korea has many hiking clubs that offer weekly group outings for its members. Sunday is the biggest day for hiking because most people work Monday through Saturday. Unless you like crowds, avoid the mountains on Sundays! This is especially true during the autumn, when the entire country goes to admire the changing colors of the leaves.

In addition to hiking, the mountains or any park in Korea will have work out stations. This was a blessing when we first got here because we didn’t know have a gym membership. These work out stations are essentially like weight rooms in a gym or fitness club. They usually include a place to do sit-ups or crunches, standing push-ups and stretching machines. Some nicer parks or mountains will have all kinds of machines like weight machines that you use to lift your own weight, ellipticals, a bench press, a large hoola hoop and much, much more.