Damn, the KT stole my piece!
I was going to do a photo essay on Korea’s small “whistle-stops” (I was wondering what the English word for ganiyeok was) for this blog, but if you’d like to do the legwork yourself, the Korea Times did a piece on the 12 stations that were recently registered as cultural properties.
Tomorrow I’ll be visiting one historic whistle stop, Gunsan’s Impi Station. The small station was built in 1936 on the historically important rail line linking Gunsan with Iri (now Iksan).
Sphere: Related Content
2 Comments
Thank you very much, kind sir!
You think ganiyeok is hard to translate (I think “whistle stop” is apt), try translating mubaechi ganiyeok, which comes up quite a bit in railway station-related articles! (”Unmanned” or “Unstaffed whistle stop” probably works best.)
P.S.: I learned that there used to be a countryside rail line from your favourite town of Ganggyeong all the way to nearby Yeonmudae. There were many other such small lines around the country…the next post I do to the Marmot’s Hole will probably be on this very topic.
Hwarangdae—one of the twelve stations—is an interesting one. Someone has posted a 1960 Korean railway timetable online (available here in 8 posts). In those days long before the subway, there was one crosstown steam train each morning that started at Susaek in western Seoul, passed through Seoul, Yongsan, Wangsimni, and Cheongnyangni, and terminated at Hwarangdae, returning to Susaek in the afternoon.
Actually, that 1960 timetable will form the basis of the post. A lot has obviously changed since then, and yet some things have stayed the same. Notably, 1960 was the year the crack Mugunghwa-ho Seoul-to-Busan express started—with dining car service and pulled by steam locomotive, making the journey in 6 hours and 40 minutes. (By contrast, the milk run took 12:40!)