Landfill Park (A Trip to the World Cup Park)

On Saturday afternoon an air quality warning was issued due to the first Yellow Dust storm of the season. We thought this would make for a good opportunity to hike outside for several hours.

We took a pretty scenic red bus ride along the Han River from Yangjae to the World Cup Stadium park. The park is pretty infamous in Korea because of where it was built. No, it wasn't built on an old Indian burial ground or anything like that- it was built on a landfill!

According to thestar.com:

"...from 1978 to 1991, this expanse of land had been the Nanjido landfill, dubbed the ‘land of death’ where municipal, construction and industrial waste created two hills over 90m high which polluted the environment with leachate and hazardous gases."

It took six years to change an unsightly landfill into a nature park, and the city has even gone so far as to make it a green park: that structure in the above photo is a series of solar panels.

Every fifth stair on the trail up the hill is numbered, so you can count down your progress as you ascend the old pile of trash. I think there were 260 steps in total, which doesn't sound like much but we were down to our t-shirts by stair 220. At the top is a flat display of space (space is a good thing in a densely populated city), dead grass, and sculptures. It would be nice to come back here in a month or two, when the grass and flowers start growing again.

We were so thirsty but the place was all sculptures and no fountains.

The view from the top... as you can see there was almost no view, thanks to the dusty weather. After exploring around for a little while, we hiked back down to World Cup Stadium Mall for a little lunch and ice cream. I have to say, it was the nicest landfill I've ever had the pleasure of hiking in.