The hand-pulled barge to Sokcho's Abai Village, where Autumn in My Heart was filmed

The barge has no engine. It is a flat steel deck strung on a cable across a narrow channel in Sokcho, on Korea's north-east coast, and it moves because the people standing on it pull. Someone at the rail hooks an iron bar onto the cable and leans back, and the far bank comes closer a few hand-lengths at a time. Many visitors first saw this crossing in a television drama a quarter of a century ago. The crossing itself is still the best reason to come.

A ferry you pull yourself

The boat is called a gaetbae (갯배). Gaet means the shore where sea meets land, and bae means boat. It shuttles between the Jungang-dong side of town, a few minutes' walk from Sokcho Tourist and Fishery Market (속초관광수산시장, Sokcho Gwangwang Susan Sijang), and Cheongho-dong, the strip of sand where Abai Maeul (아바이마을), Abai Village, stands. The channel is narrow enough that you can read the shop signs on the opposite bank before you board, and the crossing is over in a couple of minutes.

A crew member does most of the hauling, but hooks hang from the rail for passengers, and locals with shopping trolleys often take a turn without being asked. The cable is wet and gritty. The hook bites with a dull clank and the deck shudders forward. There is a small fare collected at the landing, and both the amount and how it is taken can change, so carry a few small notes and read the posted sign rather than assuming a card will work. Two road bridges now arch over the village, so cars no longer need the barge. People on foot still use it because it is the short way to the market.

The village the grandfathers built

Cheongho-dong is a sand spit with the open East Sea on one side and Cheongchoho (청초호), a calm lagoon lined with fishing boats, on the other. During the Korean War, families from Hamgyeong-do (함경도), the province at the far north-east of the peninsula, came down the coast and built here, low and fast, on land nobody else wanted. They meant to go home when the fighting stopped. Abai is the Hamgyeong word for an old man or a grandfather, and the name stuck to the neighbourhood the older generation held together while they waited.

Today you walk past low houses, some with flat concrete roofs where laundry and chillies dry, joined by alleys barely wider than a pair of shoulders. Old polystyrene fish boxes have become planters for peppers and spring onions. In the colder months, squid and pollack are pegged on lines wherever there is sun and wind. A few restaurant signs on the main lane carry the names of northern towns, and the menus follow them north too. Stay in the lanes and keep your voice down. This is a residential street before it is a filming location, and doors open straight onto the alley.

What Autumn in My Heart left behind

Autumn in My Heart (가을동화, Gaeul Donghwa), the KBS drama that aired in 2000, sent its heroine Eun-seo to live in Sokcho, and its camera kept coming back to the barge and these lanes. The series travelled across Asia in the years that followed, and Abai Village became an early stop for viewers from abroad who came looking for it. Near the landing on the Cheongho-dong side, a house marked as Eun-seo's home still stands, with boards of stills from the drama fixed to its outside walls.

The stills have faded in the salt air, and the photo boards now share space with menus and café signs. Most older drama locations in Korea end up like this: the production leaves, the street keeps working, and the story lives on as a laminated sign next to a real kitchen. Travel programmes have filmed on the barge since then, so the crossing turns up on screen more often than the house does. For the frame the drama made familiar, stand at the Jungang-dong landing and look back across the channel toward the low roofs, with a passenger's hook on the cable in the foreground.

Eating from the north-east

The lane running from the landing into the village is lined with restaurants serving abai sundae (아바이순대). It is a thick sausage in a pork-intestine casing, packed with glutinous rice, pork blood, cabbage and bean sprouts, then steamed and cut into fat rounds. It comes with a dish of saeujeot, salted shrimp, to dab on each slice. Many tables also order ojingeo sundae (오징어순대): a whole squid stuffed with a similar filling, sliced, dipped in beaten egg and pan-fried until the edges brown. Platters that mix the two are usually sized for sharing, so if you are eating alone, ask whether a single portion is possible or pick one kind.

The Hamgyeong families also brought their naengmyeon to this coast. The north-eastern style uses thin, very chewy starch noodles, and in Sokcho it often comes topped with hoe, raw fish in a sharp red dressing, as hoe naengmyeon (회냉면). Back across the channel, the market sells dakgangjeong (닭강정), fried chicken tossed in a sticky sweet glaze and boxed to travel. You are likely to see those boxes again on the bus back to Seoul, stacked on laps.

아바이마을에서는 지금도 갯배 줄을 손으로 당겨 건너편으로 간다.

Getting there, and when to go

Buses run from Seoul to Sokcho from Seoul Express Bus Terminal (서울고속버스터미널) in Gangnam, and from Dong Seoul Bus Terminal (동서울터미널) beside Gangbyeon Station (강변역) on Line 2. In clear traffic the ride takes roughly two and a half hours, and much longer on summer and public-holiday weekends. The bus operators set timetables and fares, so check them on the operators' booking sites or at the terminal counter, and book ahead for weekends. From either of Sokcho's bus terminals, a short taxi or a local bus takes you to the fishery market, and the barge landing is a short walk from there.

Weekday mornings are the quietest time on the barge, before the beach day-trippers drift over. Late autumn suits the drama's title and the light on the lagoon. Winter is clear but bitter on an open deck with wet steel in your hands, so bring gloves. The barge can stop running in high wind or rough water, and restaurant hours and closing days vary. Check the notice at the landing, and the restaurant's listing on Naver Map (네이버 지도), before you plan a meal around them. One mistake to avoid is stepping off before the barge has settled against the ramp. The deck keeps drifting for a moment after the pulling stops, and the gap between the steel and the concrete is where people trip.