Mungyeong Tea Cup Festival and Mungyeong Saejae Provincial Park
Mungyeong is about 3 hours from Seoul in Gyeongsang Province and the Mungyeong Chasabal Tea cup Festival celebrates pottery making and tea culture in the area. It’s on over the long holiday weekend in May which includes Children’s Day.
There’s lots to do. You can buy tea and tea paraphernalia or enjoy the atmosphere and take part in the festival’s activities. And you can take a look around the KBS historical drama film set which is also here. It’s the largest historical film set in Korea where dramas such as Deep Rooted Tree (SBS), Horse Doctor (MBC), and Sungkyunkwan Scandal (KBS2) were filmed.
Then there’s Mungyeong Saejae which is a famous mountain path. It’s now a tourist attraction but in the Joseon period it was part of the route that travellers had to take to get from Busan in the south to Hanyang (now Seoul).
In Joseon dramas we often find characters travelling great distances across mountains to get to the capital – on foot if they are poor, by horse if they have money, or perhaps even on a palanquin if they are really posh. And this mountain path has been preserved just as it was during Joseon times.
MUNGYEONG SAEJAE
We arrived in Mungyeong at around 11am. Visitors were starting to arrive at the festival. But we headed up the mountain first. Along the mountain path we pass three gates built during the Joseon period, built to protect the country from enemy attacks.
There’s an adorable wooden bridge. But it’s not a functioning bridge – there were barriers up to stop people attempting to cross it – and it looks like it’s part of the KBS drama set which is just across this stream to the left!
This was the path that scholars from Gyeongsang province had to take to get to the capital to take the gwageo national exam so they could leave a rock here and pray to pass the exam. Passing traders left rocks to pray for good business in the capital. Others might pray for good health or the birth of a son.
Along the path there were different kinds of accommodation on offer depending on the status of the visitors. Grand accommodation was reserved for government officials. Commoners might stay in a more humble looking inn with a thatched roof.
In historical dramas there are often scenes at a 주막 chumak tavern with tables outside where the characters eat jeon savoury pancakes and drink makgeolli rice wine before retiring to one of the small rooms in the inn.
A stream runs alongside the path up the mountain. It was a hot day and many visitors took off their shoes and socks to enjoy walking on the cold soil and then washing their feet in the stream.
We walked to the second gate which took less than an hour from the first gate (at a leisurely pace). It was built earlier than the first gate in 1594 (27th year of King Seonjo) and renovated later during King Sukjong’s reign. It’s not a tough walk and only about 3km. There were families getting up there with buggies! In Joseon times we may have had to show the guards our IDs at the checkpoint to pass through, but these days we can simply stop to take a selfie before moving on!
It’s possible to continue on up to the third gate but we decided to turn back and go to the festival so we went back down the way we had come. (The third gate was built to defend against attacks from the north also during King Seonjo’s reign.)
THE TEA CUP FESTIVAL
The ceramic tea cup festival is held in the KBS film set which was originally built for dramas set in the Goryeo period but then extended to make dramas set in Joseon too. There are now over 130 Joseon style buildings here including palaces, noblemen’s homes, tiled-roof and thatched roof houses where the poor lived.
We stopped to sit and eat some Baskin Robbins ice-cream on some very un-Joseon green plastic chairs – a modern day resting place. Amongst other snacks on offer were baked goods from Paris Baguette and fast food from Lotteria!
The various drama set buildings were used as exhibition rooms for ceramics. The cups and pots varied in price from a modest 5,000 won up to eye-watering 500,000 won +. I’m always tempted to buy lovely pottery but I also have a tendency to drop things so I didn’t buy anything this time… I’m also addicted to tea though and so picked up some new green tea grown in the area.
We caught the end of a competition for pottery students to throw a cup on a potter’s wheel. To make things even harder they are using the traditional style wheels. Watching the students kicking the wheel round and round reminded me of the drama Jung Yi, Goddess of Fire, which is based on the the first female Ceramicist of Joseon.
It was a relaxing day – not too many people even on a bank holiday weekend – and we spent a couple of hours roaming around the surrounding ‘palace’ buildings looking at more tea cups, green tea, and other local products on offer including mushrooms and omija berry juice. Then it was off to drink some omija mageolli rice wine!
