Jinhae Cherry Blossom Festival

Mar 30

I have been watching the cherry blossom calendars and updates closely because this was one of the things I have been most excited to see while we are in Korea. In North Carolina, we have Bradford pear trees that bloom everywhere in the spring that are stunning, but they smell so unbelievably bad. Beautiful trees in bloom without a side of stench to kick off spring, sounds like fun to me! Once it was confirmed the trees were in bloom in Jinhae, I booked an Air BnB and we headed south.

*Leif had the best views (hiking pack is the Osprey from REI)*

The festival is still running, this will be the last weekend for it (April 2, 2023) and you can follow their updates on Instagram (@jgfestival). Once the trees bloom you have a short window to see them and they typically start blooming down there before they bloom here in Pyeongtaek. They offer shuttles between the Yeojwacheon Romance bridge and the train tracks but those lines were extremely long, so we opted to forgo it (though next year we will make that stop our priority). There was also an information tent where they handed out maps that showed you the areas around town with the blooms and there was a lady in the tent who spoke English that was able to help direct us.

The trees were in bloom everywhere and I have never seen so many cherry blossoms in one place. We walked along the tracks (not in service) and enjoyed grabbing quick bites to snack on from the food trucks they had set up. We only stayed in the area near the station, but there are several other areas around town you can view the blooms from. Since we were there on the weekend it was super crowded so we didn’t want to fight the crowds to get to the other locations. When we arrived we lucked out with street parking nearby and honestly just stumbled upon the festival area since we had a different location plugged into our GPS. Crowds and all, I would definitely add the Jinhae Cherry Blossom Festival to your 2024 Korea bucket list, you won’t be disappointed. If you are able to I would highly recommend going down there during the week to try and avoid the weekend masses.