Naganeupseong Walled Village

Most Korean walled towns lost either their walls or their houses. Naganeupseong kept both. A stone rampart of about a kilometre and a half encloses a grid of lanes lined with low thatched cottages, mud-walled and roped down against the wind, and the administrative buildings of the old county seat still stand in the middle: the magistrate's hall, the gate pavilion, a guest house. Around a hundred families live inside and farm the land outside the wall, which is why the place smells of woodsmoke and fermenting cabbage rather than fresh paint. You can walk the top of the rampart in about half an hour, looking down into the courtyards as you go.

What you actually see

• The wall walk - about half an hour on the rampart, looking down into the yards.
• The thatched houses - low mud-walled cottages under roped straw roofs, still lived in.
• Dongheon - the magistrate's hall and the other county offices at the centre.
• Naknamnu - the two-storey gate pavilion standing on the wall.

When to go

Spring and autumn are the comfortable seasons. The roofs are re-thatched in late autumn, which is worth catching if the timing falls right. Mornings and evenings are quiet and midday brings the coaches. A folk festival takes over the village in spring. The rampart walk is best in the last hour of light.

Honest expectations

It is a genuine village, so people live behind those doors and do not want cameras in their courtyards. Parts have been tidied for visitors and the staff in period dress can make it feel arranged. Facilities are basic, buses from Suncheon are slow, and the lanes are dust in dry weather and mud after rain.

Nearby

Suncheon Bay and the city are forty minutes north; Songgwangsa and Seonamsa lie inland.