Four-hour Chase after Illegal Trekkers

A tourist bus carrying a sign reading “K-mountaineering club” on the front was waiting for passengers near a subway station at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, March 10.

When 40 men and women in their 40s and 50s got on the bus, the club leader collected club fees -35,000 won per person- and introduced the program saying, “It will take about seven hours to cover the 14 kilometer-long Baekdu Mountain Range trek. The Korea National Park Service (NPS) bans our trekking, saying our program is illegal. However, it is our responsibility to cover this course to save our lost souls lost by the Japanese colonial rule…”

At the same moment, Jang Sang-deok, 47, a natural resource protection manager, called eight employees at the Wolak Mountain office of the Korea National Park Service in Chungbuk Province and said, “The weather will be nice tomorrow, and there will be some mountaineering clubs coming to Chagatjae-Beoljae stretch, the prohibited area.”

Chasing and Being Chased-

The K mountaineering club members, whom the national park service team decided to chase down after finding which route they would take on the Internet, arrived at a rest area in Danyang, Chungbuk Province, and went trekking at 4:50 a.m. on Sunday.

At 7:00 a.m., the eight national park service officers split into two groups: the Danyang team chasing the K club members from Beoljae, the beginning of the prohibited area, and the Wolak team heading toward Beoljae from Chagatjae, the end of the banned area.

At 7:30 a.m., K club members gathered in an empty lot in front of Beoljae and had breakfast of instant noodles and soju, a Korean alcohol. Then, they began their illegal trekking of Hwangjang Mountain, ignoring the placards that read “No entrance” and “No access to the mountain.”

At 8:00 a.m., the Danyang team at Beoljae said through the radio, “Either they have gone already or they haven’t come yet.”

The crackdown team moved faster. The Wolak team ran to the mountain, passing the K-mountaineering club bus parked at Chagatjae, and the Danyang team also rushed toward Chagatjae.

At 12:00 p.m., the team seized 30 K club members blocking the road near the heliport at Chagatjae in violation of the National Park law.

Jang Yun-bong, 39, the manager of the crackdown team, imposed a penalty on two trekking guides, saying “In principle, I should impose penalties on all 40 members, but I will make an exception for the members who didn’t know this was illegal.”

Mr. B, the leader of the club, climbed down with three members lagging behind. In fact, it was a runaway to escape the crackdown team. They were neither being chased nor going together with the officers. This awkward chasing continued for about 20 minutes.

However, when the crackdown team followed the members, threatening, “We will impose penalties on all four of you,” Mr. B took out his personal ID.

He said, “It is a responsibility to complete the Baekdu Mountain Range as a Korean. We will continue this trekking.”

Jang, the manager of the crackdown team, countered, saying, “Completing the Baekdu Mountain Range has nothing to do with patriotism. A real patriot will take the lead in protecting nature and the ecosystem that we will pass down to our descendents.”

While this newspaper’s reporters interviewed at Wolak Mountain with the K-club and the crackdown team for about eight hours, 120 people from three clubs were cracked down upon. An employee of the National Park Service said, “The searching program for illegal trekking plans on the websites has reduced the number of illegal trekking, but it is impossible to root it out. Raising awareness among trekkers is needed.”

Monitoring Illegal Trekking through the Internet-

This kind of chasing has become common in most famous national parks on weekends with the National Park Service cracking down on illegal trekkers.

The NPS searches every single trekking course that the approximately 1,000 mountaineering clubs provide on their websites and send them letters recommending changing courses or cancellation if they include illegal trekking paths. The clubs which continue their illegal plans and ignoring the recommendation or not checking out homepage bulletins or those that don’t have a homepage will be checked at the site.

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