Before South Korea became internationally famous for its beauty products, kimchi and pop groups, it was known as the Land of the Rising Sun. The name has long been used to refer to the Korean Peninsula before it was split into South and North Korea, because the peaceful, temple-dotted mountains and tranquil forests were the place where the dawn broke on the Asian continent.

But in the years before this pandemic, calm was not the word that best described South Korea. The country experienced a cultural explosion in art, food, literature, and film, with many high-profile films such as “Parasite”, which swept the Oscars in February 2020, pushing the country onto many people’s travel lists. Just a month later, the new crown came, and calm returned again. This bustling country closed its doors.

But on July 1, 2022, South Korea reopened to foreign tourists, issuing short-term visitor visas for the first time in two years and lifting most COVID-19-related restrictions on residents.

South Korea’s rural secrets are little known, even to many of its urbanites. According to urban planning data, 92% of South Korea’s population now lives in urban areas, up from 39% in 1960. As a traveler to more than 20 Asian countries (including popular destinations like Cambodia and Thailand, as well as lesser-visited places like Laos, Bhutan and Taiwan, plus a dozen trips to Japan), I had expected Korea’s slower pace to resemble those countries.

I couldn’t be more wrong.

In March 2019, I spent two weeks hiking and touring the South Korean countryside, exploring its eight continental provinces. South Korea is about 100,000 square kilometers, slightly larger than Indiana but smaller than Kentucky. What I didn’t know was that March was not the best time to be there. It was muddy season. Wildflowers hadn’t yet bloomed, many trails were still closed, and the smog was at its worst.

Despite the muddy roads, I was immersed in peaceful villages with thatched roofs, serene temples perched on hilltops, starlit nights and laid-back “slow food” towns where a generation of Korean women over 60 are preserving the country’s culinary heritage.

To reach rural South Korea, the first hurdle is leaving Seoul, a metropolis with a massive population of 26 million.

Korea’s high-speed rail is cheap and efficient, but it mostly connects urban areas. Hiring a guide and driver isn’t cheap, but it’s a great way to get more insight into this fast-changing culture. I combined the two modes of travel, which helped overcome the language barrier and gave me the freedom to move around while still allowing me to explore independently and have some downtime whenever I felt like it.

It takes about two hours to escape Seoul’s neo-brutalist infinity pool of urban areas, passing neat rows of uniform apartment buildings standing like dominoes on the brown plains of the bowl that surrounds Seoul and its eight guardian mountains.

South Korea’s northernmost province, Gangwon, two hours northeast of Seoul, is a fitting first stop, especially as it served as the picturesque filming location for Okja, the 2017 film from Parasite director Bong Joon-ho about a cute pig raised on a lush mountaintop farm. Gangwon is located right next to the notorious Demilitarized Zone, a 248km-long, 4km-wide buffer zone between North and South Korea.

I skipped the DMZ to explore South Korea’s far north, where unspoiled beaches, national parks with granite peaks and wooded valleys continue to draw domestic tourists.

I set off for Seoraksan National Park, one of South Korea’s 21 national parks, a UNESCO biosphere reserve in the Taebaek Mountains that run through the Korean Peninsula. At the base of the park are gift shops and food stalls selling hot coffee, instant noodles and the ultra-satisfying rice cakes, which are deliciously dunked in a fermented red chili sauce.

If you have 8 to 11 hours to spare, you can take on the challenge of climbing 1,708 meters to the park’s main peak, Daecheongbong. I didn’t do it. Like many tourists, I chose to take the shorter and easier cable car to another peak called Gwongeumseong, which was originally built to defend against the Mongols, who invaded several times in the 13th century, leaving traces of it visible in Korean art, cuisine and culture today.

At Seoraksan (and for most of my trip), I was the only non-Asian among the many tourists, with no other foreigners in sight. But my next stop was not only empty of other tourists, but also empty of other guests. I had booked a night’s lodging at Samhaesa, a 1,000-year-old temple tucked deep in the Muryeong Valley. I was alone, except for the monk, Bubchang, a wiry, friendly monk in gray robes, a floppy hat, and a perpetual smile.

Buchang walked me at dusk into a mossy forest filled with pink spring wildflowers and beside a waterfall cascading over weathered rocks inscribed with ancient poetry. He walked me through the 108 prostrations, a calorie-burning ritual in which I chanted 108 Buddha names, bowed deeply 108 times, and strung 108 bodhi beads into a necklace.

After a simple dinner of rice and kimchi, Buchang held my hand and told me I was beautiful as he rang the brass temple bell. The temple stay program at Mikawaji is called “Love Yourself, Help Five Friends.”

“Visitors who come here learn to love themselves first, and then imagine how to help five friends,” Buchan said, taking a selfie for both of us on his smartphone.

Unlike Japan’s tourist-oriented “shukubo” (temple lodgings), which offer sumptuous vegetarian kaiseki meals, manicured gardens and even onsen baths, South Korea’s temple lodgings are more organized and can feel a little spartan, but more realistically reflect the monks’ daily lives. Many monks live in rooms that resemble prison cells, with cold, hard floors and chores that require guests to complete. Showers, private toilets, heating or outlets to charge phones are rare.

I chose Mikawadera in part because $70 a night seemed like a bargain, especially since the rooms come with showers and toilets and heated floors. But while a night out may be mentally rewarding, it’s physically demanding. The mattress is probably as thick as a down jacket, and the pillow is shaped like a loaf of toast but harder than a dictionary. And while the floor isn’t exactly cold, it’s still hard.

Although it was cold, smoggy, and rainy for much of my time in Korea, I still made a point to visit Gangwon Province’s famous beaches. Just south of Donghae, South Korea’s easternmost city, Chuam Beach is a cozy surfing town known for its secluded beach set behind a pine forest and the sacred Chuam Candlestick Rocks. According to local legend, the rocks represent a man who couldn’t decide between his wife and concubine, and all three were petrified.

Hanok, a traditional Korean inn, is another way to experience old Korea, and many of them have been carefully preserved and are worth a visit. I drove two hours further south to North Gyeongsang Province, home to Andong Hahoe Village, which sits on a flat, U-shaped stretch of sand along the Nakdong River. Most of the low-slung houses along the stone-walled dirt roads have landscaped courtyards, thatched roofs and sliding windows covered with hanji, a fibrous paper made from mulberry bark that is used in many traditional houses.

Located in the center of the village, Bukchon House was built in 1811 for a noble family and converted into a hanok in 2016. The house is surrounded by verandas and shaded by a 300-year-old pine tree with twisted branches. The ninth-generation owner of the house has carefully restored the painted screens and ondol flooring, a floor heating system. Although the hand-woven cotton velvet mattress is very beautiful, I longed for thicker cushions.

I didn’t get enough sleep, but I got to see the beautiful scenery. At sunset, I walked through the pine forest on the sandy ground in the village and saw two sturdy musk deer running in the rustling reeds on the riverbed.

A two-hour drive southeast, through jagged forests and mountains, brings me to the lush, hilly seaside of North and South Jeolla Provinces on the southern coast, home to 2,000 islands (300 of which are uninhabited). Nowhere else in South Korea does the country’s love of food come together better than in these two green, relaxing, and underdeveloped provinces.

This is the site of Baekyangsa Temple. Many food lovers have known this place since an episode of the Netflix show “Chef’s Table” featuring the nun Jeong Kwan, whose vegetarian meals include lotus water and acorns brushed with sesame oil. But she is not the only person here who has a culinary reputation. Slow Food International, an Italy-based organization focused on preserving local food heritage, has nominated several Jeolla Province “slow cities” for their historic dishes, and the central figures of these slow cities are often local female food experts.

In 2012, UNESCO named Jeonju a city of gastronomy. It was pouring rain when I arrived in this slow city, where the cobblestone main road was lined with replica Joseon-era shophouses, where busy street food vendors hawked everything from grapefruit beer to grilled cheese sandwiches on skewers.

Just a few blocks away, my next hanok, Haknindang (rooms from $75), is set within a gated courtyard and built in 1908 by royal carpenters from wide, solid black pine logs. I push open the latticed wooden door and enter my room, which is furnished with Korean lacquerware storage boxes, a crimson embroidered mattress, and a square, woven straw pillow that looks like a tissue box cover. Exhausted from a day of traveling, I climb onto the thin mattress and fall asleep to the sound of raindrops pattering on the tiled roof.

In the morning, I was greeted by Seo Hwa-soon, the fourth-generation descendant of the hanok founder (now retired), who wore 1950s-style red-rimmed glasses and a pink silk scarf, and served me a lavish breakfast of 25 colors, carefully arranged, including the family’s traditional recipe, saenghapjak, which includes sliced ​​white lilies, shiitake mushrooms and carrots, pink-dyed lotus root slices, and super-tender grilled Korean beef.

My last stop was the slow city of Changping, known for its stone walls along its lanes, relaxing cafes and shops selling hangwa, a dessert made with honey. It is also home to Ki Soon Do, a famous traditional Korean paste master. Doenjang is essential to kimchi and many other Korean dishes.

In her wooded home studio, dozens of clay jars are filled with fermented sauces, including soy sauce, miso-like paste and chili sauce made from red peppers and strawberries, the latter of which is her specialty.

Her family has been making sauces for 10 generations and now sells them around the world. Dressed in the green and gold traditional hanbok, she plays the role of matriarch with aplomb. She checks the sauce with a spoon made from a hollowed-out gourd. As she tastes the sauce, her adult son watches her expression carefully, knowing that her taste buds are the family’s most valuable asset.

On the three-hour return trip to Seoul on South Korea’s high-speed train, I paid $15 to upgrade to first-class, a carriage equipped with red velvet seats and TV screens, with farmland dotted with giant apartment buildings whizzing by outside the window.

Seoul is a city with many shopping malls, museums and modern hotels, from the mid-range Lotte Hotel to the luxurious Four Seasons Hotel, but it is difficult to find traces of ancient Korea. Like many city dwellers around the world during the pandemic, Seoulites have developed a deeper love for nature and have fled the city. With more foreign tourists, perhaps access to rural areas can be more open.

“Foreigners are just beginning to understand Korea and Korean food,” Ms. Ji said as she stirred a jar of 20-year-old sauce. “We wanted to share it with the world as a way to help preserve these old traditions.”