Museum SAN — Attraction in Wonju-si

The Oak valley shuttle bus is not currently running. We were told by museum staff that it was finished ( and the link from the museum San website leads to a blank page)

However the Wonju City Tour Bus is a great option if you don’t want to take a taxi or drive. There are 6 buses a day doing a loop from Wonju bus terminal and Wonju, Manjong and Seowonju train stations to museum San and back. ( see photos)

E.g.the bus leaves Wonju bus terminal at 09.29, 10.49, 12.40 etc, and arrives at museum San at 10.21, 11.41, 13.41 etc.

Each stop has a red sign with the loop route shown, and times of departure from that stop.

We think the bus runs daily, just not sure about Mondays when the museum is closed anyway.

Cost is W5000 for a day pass. We paid on the bus with credit card. This gives you a wristband which can also be used for 20% discounted entry to the museum.

We bought a ticket for museum entry, meditation and Turrel exhibition when we arrived. This is usually W46,000 so we saved W9000 each.

The Museum is excellent, and while expensive we felt it was worth the money. We especially loved the architecture and the gardens, landscape setting.

The exhibitions were interesting and beautifully displayed. There was some introductory signage in English, hopefully with time they will add more as it did add to our appreciation. The guided meditation and turrell tour was in Korean but we were able to follow along ok.

The Terrace cafe is in a lovely setting, and food and drinks are of good quality. But it is VERY expensive. A flat white coffee W10,000, a slice of cake W13,000 and a panini sandwich is W25,000.

Not a cheap day out, but one you will remember for a long time. So...

Architect Ando Tadao (Photo by Taegon Kim). Museum San is arguably Ando’s best project in Korea. It’s located at Oak Valley Ski Resort, which located about 2-hour drive from Seoul. The museum was founded by Hansol, a famous paper company. The museum’s primary exhibition is hence on the production and trade of paper. The museum’s site is awesome. It contains inviting parking, visitor center, huge birch forestry garden, reflecting pool, main museum, and lastly, sculpture garden and James Turrell’s pavillion. The buliding exterior is local stone. The museum is pretty much shell in shell. Outer shell is minimally opened to invite reflecting pool, surrounding landscape, and light. Inner shell is the exhibition space. Some are participatory exhbition and some are standard exhibition. The two highpoints of the main museum is the cafe and the triangle garden. The cafe is popular because of its island-like sitting spots, which is surrounded by water viewing waves of the mountain ridges. The triagle garden is awesome because of its sharp turns diagonally continuous window strip and piercing stair landing. The museum’s original name was Hansol Museum. But because if its unforgetable surrounding mountain-scape, the museum’s name changed to Museum San. San means...

This museum was excellent. The Turrell pieces were a highlight.

If you are visiting from Seoul, it is worth the expedition.

If you are coming from Seoul, I suggest you catch the 7:30am express bus to Wonju bus terminal (but you need to get your tickets at least 15 mins before the bus leaves). Once you get to Wonju, there is a shuttle bus that goes to the museum. The timetable of the shuttle bus is on the Korean language part of the Museum website (the English ‘getting here’ section is out of date). To find the shuttle bus timetable, you click on the ‘pin’ icon, then scroll to the bottom of that page where there are three boxes with hyperlinks. The third box (in deep blue) is the local tourist shuttle bus timetable.

The bus from Seoul will drop you off at the Wonju bus terminal, but you will have to leave the terminal building to get the shuttle bus. The bus leaves from a regular commuter bus stop out the front of the station (outside a Olive Young and next to a taxi rank). The bus departs infrequently, so make sure you get your timing right. It takes about 45 minutes to get to the Museum. It also...