Anyang Day Trip: Art Park, Gopchang Alley & Anyangcheon

Anyang is named after a temple that no longer exists. Around 900, according to the city’s own history, the future founder of the Goryeo dynasty, Wang Geon, saw five-colored clouds over Samseongsan, met an old monk beneath them and built a temple called Anyangsa, a Buddhist word for a land of rest without suffering. The temple was gone by the 16th century. Its site sat under a pharmaceutical factory until excavations in 2010 turned up roof tiles inscribed “Anyangsa.”

That layering is the city in miniature. Before the 1990s Anyang was a factory town known for grapes and strawberries, with a valley pleasure resort that drew tens of thousands of visitors a day in summer. Then the factories moved out, the Pyeongchon new town went up, and in 2005 the worn-out resort was turned into an outdoor public-art park. Anyang is mostly a residential city of over half a million people, but it rewards a day: art in a mountain stream, a 1,200-year-old temple pillar, and a market alley that does one dish very well.

How do you get to Anyang from Seoul?

Line 1 to Anyang Station for the old downtown and the market; Line 4 to Pyeongchon or Beomgye for the new town. The Art Park sits up a valley between the two, reached by village bus.

🚇 Getting to Anyang (times are approximate; check Naver Map before you go)

Route	Line / bus	Approx. time	Notes
Seoul Station → Anyang Station	Line 1	about 30 minutes	For Anyang 1-beon-ga and Jungang Market
Sadang → Beomgye Station	Line 4	about 20 minutes	9 stops; Pyeongchon Station is one stop earlier
Anyang Station → Anyang Art Park	Village bus 2 from Exit 1	—	Ride to the last stop, by the Kim Chung-up Architecture Museum
Beomgye Station → Anyang Art Park	Village bus 2-1	—	Board opposite Exit 8, outside Woori Bank Pyeongchon branch; ride to the last stop
Gwanak Station → Anyang Art Park	Taxi or walk from Exit 2	about 25 minutes on foot	Gwanak is the Line 1 stop before Anyang

What is Anyang known for?

Public art, a factory past, and a stream. The city’s own story starts with Anyangsa and runs through Joseon: King Jeongjo built Managyo, a stone bridge still standing in the city, for his processions to his father’s tomb. The modern chapters are the ones you will see.

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What should you see in Anyang?

Give the Art Park valley a half day, then come down to the market and the stream. The other sights are worth adding if you are staying nearby or hiking.

Anyang Art Park — In the 1950s and 60s this valley on the Samseong-cheon stream was the Anyang Resort, with a natural-water swimming pool and crowds of tens of thousands on summer days, according to the city. Decades of unplanned development wore it down, and in 2005 the first Anyang Public Art Project began replacing it with art. The city counts about 50 outdoor works today, scattered along the stream and up the hiking paths, plus exhibition spaces, heritage sites and many cafés. Seoul National University’s Anyang Arboretum, at the top of the valley, has been fully opened to the public after 58 years. Walk up one bank and down the other; you find the works by stumbling onto them. APAP is held about every three years; the seventh edition was in 2023.

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Anyang Pavilion — The public-art project’s base at Yesulgongwon-ro 180, a building by the Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza from the first APAP. Come here first for maps of the works and the current program. It is 5–10 minutes’ walk from the public car park at the bus terminus.

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Kim Chung-up Architecture Museum and Anyang Museum — At the park entrance, the former Yuyu pharmaceutical factory, designed by the modernist architect Kim Chung-up, now houses a museum of his work and, since September 2017, the Anyang Museum, which tells the city’s history from prehistoric times. When the factory site was excavated in 2010, roof tiles inscribed “Anyangsa” confirmed that the temple that gave the city its name stood here. Outside are the Jungchosa stone flagpole supports, made in 826–827. Three eras sit within a few steps of each other: Silla stonework, a mid-century modernist factory and 21st-century public art.

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Anyangcheon — The stream flows through the city on its way to Seoul’s southwest. Anyang city describes it as an ecological stream with water plants, wildlife and migrating birds, lined with bike paths and walking trails. Where the Hagui-cheon joins it there is a plaza called Ssanggaeul, and the Anyangcheon Ecological Story Hall runs indoor and outdoor nature programs. It is the locals’ evening walk, not a sight; for the Seoul stretch, see our guide to the streams Seoul locals use.

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Anyang 1-beon-ga — The streets around Anyang Station, open since 1905, make up the old downtown. The city calls it a mecca of teenage fashion: chain stores, cheap clothes, street food and buskers on weekends. Jungang Market, a traditional market, is right next to it, and that is where you will eat (see below).

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Manghaeam — A small hermitage on the hills of Manan-gu whose name means “the hermitage that looks at the sea.” Tradition credits its founding to the Silla monk Wonhyo and a rebuilding in 1803 to Lady Hyegyeong, the mother of King Jeongjo. It is one of the city’s “Anyang 9 Scenes” for its sunset over the city and toward the Yellow Sea. Also among the nine: Byeongmogan Citizen Park, a quarry that supplied railway ballast from the Japanese colonial period to the 1980s, now a park with an artificial waterfall and trails into Surisan; and the Surisan Holy Ground, a Catholic pilgrimage site for the martyr Choi Kyeong-hwan, father of Korea’s second priest.

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🎫 Visitor information (Anyang city tourism pages, October 2026)

Place	Hours	Closed	Notes
Anyang Art Park	Outdoor park	—	Public car park by the Kim Chung-up museum: 500 won for 30 min, then 200 won per 10 min, 7,000 won a day
Anyang Pavilion	Tue–Sun 10:00–18:00	Mon, Jan 1, Seollal and Chuseok holidays	Yesulgongwon-ro 180
Anyang Museum	09:00–18:00	Mondays and public holidays	Yesulgongwon-ro 103beon-gil 4
Art Park Tourist Information Center	09:00–18:00	Mondays	Yesulgongwon-ro 131beon-gil 7; maps and brochures
“Anyang Gugyeong of the Month” guided walk	4th Wednesday and Saturday, 10:00, about 100 min	Dec–Feb and July	Free, Korean-language; reserve from the 1st of each month

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Where do locals eat in Anyang?

Anyang eats by street rather than by famous shop. The city’s tourism office points residents and visitors to a handful of food clusters, and in each one the advice is the same: walk in, look at who is eating, pick a door.

Anyang Jungang Market gopchang alley (Naengcheon-ro 196) — The one place to go. The city says about 30 shops have held this alley for more than 35 years, all selling the same dish: 순대곱창볶음 sundae-gopchang bokkeum, blood sausage and pork intestines stir-fried on a hot plate with glass noodles, cabbage and perilla leaves in a spicy sauce. Each shop’s sauce is a little different. The city’s page puts it at 9,000 won per person (page updated July 2026). Ask for extra perilla powder if you like it nutty, and when only a little is left, order fried rice in the same pan; the city calls that “not optional.” Takeaway is available. If you liked Seoul’s Sillim Sundae Town, this is the market version.

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Anyang Art Park food street — The valley has been a Gyeonggi Province-designated food street since 2010, and the old resort menu survives: whole native chicken or duck simmered as 백숙 baeksuk, pork galbi, cold 열무국수 yeolmu guksu (noodles in young-radish kimchi broth) and mung-bean pancakes. Newer restaurants and cafés with stream views line the Samseong-cheon. Baeksuk takes time to cook, so for a group it is worth calling ahead.

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Pyeongchon Meokgeori-chon (around Gwiin-ro 190beon-gil) — Built up with the new town in the 1990s, between Gwiin-dong and Sinchon-dong, and, according to the city, the place Anyang residents go most for a weekend meal out. About 100 restaurants: grilled eel, tuna sashimi, seafood stew, clam hotpot, stir-fried cuttlefish, dak-hanmari (whole chicken in broth), ramen. Decide what you want and then find a shop that does it.

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Indeogwon Station area — Anyang’s after-work district. The city describes it as the place for dinner with soju or beer: samgyeopsal, fried chicken, gopchang, jokbal (braised pig’s trotters), spicy beef ribs and gamjatang (pork-bone stew), with drinkers coming in from Gwacheon, Suwon and Seoul. Come in the evening.

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🍽️ Anyang's local food streets at a glance (Anyang city tourism pages, 2026)

Food street	What to eat	When to go	Nearest station
Jungang Market gopchang alley	Sundae-gopchang stir-fry, then fried rice	Lunch or dinner	Anyang (Line 1)
Art Park food street	Chicken or duck baeksuk, yeolmu guksu, pork galbi	After walking the park	Anyang (Line 1) + village bus 2
Pyeongchon Meokgeori-chon	Eel, seafood stew, dak-hanmari	Weekend dinner	Pyeongchon / Beomgye (Line 4)
Indeogwon	Samgyeopsal, gopchang, jokbal	Evening, with drinks	Indeogwon (Line 4)

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How should you spend one day in Anyang?

• 10:00 — Anyang Station, Exit 1. Village bus 2 to the last stop.
• 10:20 — Kim Chung-up Architecture Museum and Anyang Museum, then the Jungchosa flagpole supports outside.
• 11:30 — Anyang Pavilion for a map, then walk the Art Park valley and its outdoor works (about 2 hours at an easy pace).
• 13:30 — Late lunch on the Art Park food street: baeksuk if you are a group, yeolmu guksu if not.
• 15:30 — Bus back to Anyang Station. Walk Anyang 1-beon-ga and Jungang Market.
• 17:30 — Dinner in the gopchang alley, fried rice to finish.
• 19:00 — Optional: walk off dinner along Anyangcheon, or take Line 1 back to Seoul.