Korean Job Discussion Forums

[KoreanLifer]

had 1st day Friday skiing here in Kr at Muju resort and it was a giant fiasco.i heard someone say there was over 40,000 people on the Mt.icy & carved up slopes and koreans speeding down the slopes like maniacs in the "fast & Furious movies".how about all the folks talking on their cell phones parked right in the middle of the slopes!!! no bunny slopes for beginners either!!! throw the falling down learners in with the speed demons and its a skiing nightmare.

the bottomline is: Kr skiing is not like Switerland, France, BC, Utah, or CO.if u got the time & $ go abroad

[HBK]

obviously you need to go up to other mountains before you can form a more accurate opinion.

phoenix resort is not bad

yongpyun is not bad either

[kylehawkins2000]

I've been to Phoenix Park and Hyundai Sungwoo. They are both alright, but very expensive considering that relatively small size of the slopes.

The morning and night skiing was alright but the crowds were horrible in the afternoons. There seems to be less skiing ettiquette here than in western countries and I lost count of the number of times I was run into by other skiiers/boarders. It's similar to the subway....it sometimes borders on complete anarchy.

I still had fun each time I went but I could certainly make a long list of changes I would make at both resorts if I was the one in charge.

[HBK]

yea, there can be quite the mayhem when you're up there.......


aside from boarders/skiiers crashing into me from outta nowhere, what really got to me was the long lines at the lifts

but.....makes for good sightseeing.


what i liked about phoenix were the inside facilities. the cafeteria is GREAT, so big! and there were washrooms everywhere which saved me the time from waiting. i was impressed how clean everything was!!!!!!!

[kylehawkins2000]

I agree,

The facilities at Phoenix park are pretty good. They are much better than Hyundai Ski Resort. The town seems to have alot more to see and do as well.

[HBK]

............what i love the most about 'boarding in Korea are the..*drum roll*

SPACE GIRLS

yea, the SPACE GIRLS, that what we called them,

the cute girls in those puffy shiny space suits out there promoting!!!!!!!!!

[rawiri]

what a load of crap,
i spent 4 days art muju, last mon-thur and had the time of my fricken life, albeit i havent skied for about 15 years, but through those 4 days i never waited more than 10 minutes in line (there was only really 2 occasions where i actually was waiting for any real period of time). as for crazy skiiers, bullshit, i didint see kioreans as being any crazier than anyone else, and in fact a group of foreign friends learning snowboarding caused a fair deal of carnage themselves. what a stup[id comment to say that skiing in korea is not like skiing in switzerland etc!!!!! you sir win the esl prize for stupidist comment of 2004 (to date). of course its not switzerland, but if you want to spend 80 000won on a fun days skiing then take a day off work and go have a good time.

BIG UP'S to the staff, they were really friendly and fully enthusiastic which was really really nice to see, liftys always bowing and if they spot you as a foreigner always, "have a good time" or "happy new year". i did 2 spots of night skiing and at 1 lift about 5 attendents all lined up and all bowed and said something in korean as each person walked past. all in all io had a perfect time, i really enjoyed muju, for a more experienced skiier it may not pose that much of a challenge, but i found it really good and was pretty happy with my progress at the end of the four days.

[Dr. Buck]

Muju is overpriced and overcrowded. The entire resort is is designed in a way that cannot handle the massive number of people, as if no consideration was given to people doing the skiing. A ski hill of that proportion of runs might have a small chalet/hotel and a few cabins. Muju on the other hand has developed an entire mountainside: ten story cement condos--about ten or so buildings total.

It's a low-class, fourth rate hill. Advanced skiiers will be bummed because the black diamonds aren't really true blacks, and those so-called blacks are only about 100 meters of steep ice and that's it.
The mid-level skiiers might have some fun, but for the the beginning skier it's not the place to be--there are simply thousands--yes, thousands of other beginners out there crashing into each other--makes for a nasty learning environment--a beginner can hardly make a wide V turn without a wipe-out.

And people crash big time. The ski patrol earns their wages dragging off bodies on sleds everyday. The accidents got so bad that some shmuck crashed through a flimsy snow fence and bite the ice in some rocky ravine. This guy's death resulted in chain link fences lining nearly all of the slopes. Backcountry--or off-trail skiing doesn't exist. No trails through the snowy trees. In fact its almost impossible to simply sneak off the slope and into the woods to take a leak.

I've skiied there at least once a winter for the last five years--but if you're like me and need to ski at least once a winter because of that calling urge to feel the snow, well, then--you don't have much of a choice if you live in the southern areas of Korea and do not want to trek up to the Kangwon province.

There's a few tricks I have to make the sad scene more tolerable. I pack in a home-made lunch rather than eat the cafeteria slop. I get my "member" tickets through a scalper. I park close to the base in a clever way. Get there early as I can. I rent my gear from a shop that has good, professional service and I've given them referal business. Wear headphones to drown out the blaring K-Pop that is hammered across the mountainside. Work over and pay careful attention to the mid-mountain lifts, those are the ones you want to hit for the short lift lines. Never get trapped down at the base lifts--it's chaos, ugly and the lines are long, very long as you listen to dancing girls flog KTF telecome service out of speakers pumping out bubble gum music. Consider the wild, flailing, crashing, out-of-control Korean skiers as a kind of living, breathing slalom course.

At the end of the day--no you want to be exhausted and quit skiing before the the lifts shut down. You have to escape early and avoid the savage traffic jam that wells up everywhere--the whole place just isn't equipped to move so many skiiers.

And if you do stick around, you won't find much of an apres ski scene--in fact, you'll be hard pressed to find a good drinking hole--sure, down the village there are a few bulgolgi gardens, singing rooms and a couple hofs--but that's about it. Just have your own brew chilling in the back of your trunk.

Rooms in the village are around 100,000 won. That's for a room in a love hotel--a love hotel in a ski town.
Last year in Colorado, I paid $85 a night for a sweet room with an attached outdoor jacuzzi. With all sort of amenties. No comparison. (Sure, you could go to a public bathhouse and hang out the package with the boys after a hard day of skiing--maybe one happy fella will give you a massage--whatever!!)

Like the fellow up above said--save your money and ski abroad at a real mountain, with decent accomadations, a cool nightlife, good resturants and all that.
If you're craving hard to hit the slopes and have no plans for traveling abroad to the land of sweet slopes, well, do your skiing here, but keep your standards low, tolerance high and bull$hit detector on high alert.

As a side note, Muju has a bit of dirty history. It's located in Dokgyusan National Park, a place that has very high ratings in terms of environmental protection. The KFEM has some info on it. Google it. It turns out, some palms were greased and this resort was built on the protected park's tallest mountain. It would be like building a ski hill on Denali, in a sense, with George Bush's permission. Or like turning the Florida Everglades into a waterworld fun park.

[Dr. Buck]

Rawiri:
WTF? Why are you praising what someone is supposed to do?

"they were really friendly and fully enthusiastic which was really really nice to see"

THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE FRIENDLY. THEY ARE SERVICE WORKERS AT A RESORT.

It's their job. It's nothing. It's expected. What? Were you expecting one of them to lean out and trip you as you hopped on the 'tard lift down at the bottom?

[mack the knife]

Like Dr. Buck, I feel the need to get my ski on at least one time during the season. I've skied Yongpyeong, Sungwoo, Phoenix, Bear's Town, and Jisan.

After a couple of years of farting around on crappy slopes I finally settled on Yongpyeong. So, this holiday I headed there with some friends and figured I could at the very least get my ski on. Well, not really. Yongpyeong is actually 2 mountains, and you must purchase an extra gondola ticket if you wish to ski the second mountain which, by the way, holds all the best runs. However, the gondola was shut down due to windy conditions. So, as semi-expert skiers we had only 3 or 4 acceptable runs to choose from. Ice skates would have been more appropriate for the conditions. As mentioned time and time again, the lift lines were attrocious (often 15 minutes or more), aggravated by the fact that the lifts run so slowly I could have run up the mountain faster (WITH SKIS ON).

My point: I've been skiing in Korea many times and this year will be my last. It's simply too expensive (at least W100,000 for a day trip to Yongpyeong--forget the other resorts, they bite), the crowds too large, the conditions icy, the rental equipment shoddy (my buddy has had to return his boards on 2 separate occasions), the food/beverage selection lackluster, the apres worthless, and yes, they blare crappy Korean ballads from loudspeakers all over the mountain. In short, it's a nightmare of epic proportions.

p.s. Did I mention you will either suffer from heat stroke or, conversly, hypothermia on the bus ride to and from the slopes?

Happy trails, Hans!
MTK

[rawiri]

dr buck,
thats what i said, if you are an experienced skiier then it wouldnt be worth while spending too long there, but if like me you havent skiied for a long time, then its fun and exciting, and if like me you organise your trip there over a period of time when most of korea is at work, i.e monday/tuesday of last week, and when most of korea are away visitng there familys i.e wed/thur of last week, then you will find a relatively uncrowded mountain.

i mentioned the staff cos in the west too often you can tell people in the service industry couldnt really give 2 shits, but the guys at muju actually looked to be fairly enthusiastic, so you dont like it, well dont go there then, all im doing is saying what i thought of the place from my (beginners ) perspective.

as i said, i spent for days there, on the "tard" lifts as you so eloquently put it, and on the other lifts like the gondola which takes you to the top of a 6.5 km run.

[Psy]

So Phoenix Park and Yongpyun are the places to go? I never boarded in Korea, but I planned to when I return. I've heard alot of horror stories about the crowds and crazy newbs crashing into anyone. My friend even asked me to by him a helmet because of stupid people. I always assumed this was an exaggeration, but judging by peoples' comments, it doesn't sound like it. I'm having second thoughts now.