Yongpyong Resort

If you ask any Korean where to go snowboarding you can be sure they’ll say Yongpyong. The country’s oldest and most popular ski resort is located at the end of a three hour traffic jam near the East Coast city of Gangnung. Another resort of the Balwang Mountains in which Phoenix Park is also located, Yongpyong has twelve fast lifts and a classy base lodge. It has been the ace in the hand of several unsuccessful bids by Korea to host the Winter Olympics and by far the coolest place to say you went skiing on the weekend. Even if all that means these days is that you queued for hours and spent a few minutes bouncing from one collision with an out-of-control skier to the next. But that’s on weekends. During the week this place is practically empty and does a good impression of a European resort.