Day 6 and 7

Day 6 consisted of hiking inwangsan mountain and eating at a traditional market . Inwangsan Mountain was beautiful and for the number of people hiking it the amount of trash left behind was astonishing low. The hike was 2.5 km long and was considered “average” difficulty. It wasn’t too hard but it’s more intense than anything I’ve seen in North Carolina. The big part of this hike was the elevation change for me. Over the course of the hike you have an elevation change of over 300 meters. At the top of the mountain resides Satgatbawi Rock, which resembles the horsehair hat worn by a nobleman. You’ll also notice the Seoul city wall follows you all the way up the mountain, still very well maintained even all the way up there.

Day 7 started with a tour of Mapo Resource Recovery Facility. This facility is responsible for managing the waste of 5 of the 25 districts in Seoul. A larger quantity of this waste is burned and then filtered. The fire produced here is the converted into energy for the city. The pollutants made by the burning are heavily filtered so that nothing but clean air is release back into the sky. The ash from the trash burned is turned into bricks. These are the same bricks they use to pave their sidewalks so that this waste treatment plant effectively gets rid of waste, produces electricity, and recycles by products into construction materials

After our tour of Mapo we went too Haneul Parks which sits on top of an old garbage disposal site. The garbage mounds had been built up so high that the now park sits much higher than the surrounding area creating clear site lines. Much of the park consists of native species and local art pieces. The trash underneath the site still remains and to combat the gas buildup of this trash breaking down, gas vents have been placed around the park.

Overall Inwangsan Mountain gets a 9/10, Mapo and it’s efforts get a 7/10 and Haneul Park gets an 8/10. I really love when we start to give back to nature.