Buraksan Forest Experience
Last week for Valentine’s, I told Brandon that I planned a date day experience for us. He had the upcoming Friday off so I finally booked the Burak Forest Experience we’ve seen and talked about for a while now.
Buraksan is the mountain local to Osan Air Base in Songtan. It’s close to our apartment and I frequent the trails on this mountain a lot. When the weather is comfortable we also love to come to the park with the girls and friends. Where the road just about dead ends (and across from Prefer Coffee) is an obstacle course in the woods called Burak Forest Experience. It’s hard to miss. We’ve talked about doing it multiple times. The more time I spend at Prefer Coffee, the more often I see people attempting the obstacle course and figured it was time for us to try it out.
Ticket office for Buraksan Forest Experience.
They have three course options - easy, normal and hard. The easy course is for ages 8+ (120cm+), the normal course is for ages 11+ (130Cm+) and the hard course is for ages 13+ (140cm+). They also list weight requirements on their website (25 -120 kg) and it also states that “all three must be met.”
You can find them on instagram @burak_forest. They are closed on Monday and on the third Tuesday of the month the open the reservations for the next month. You can book up to 12 tickets at a time and can book up until an hour before the time slot. I found that the early bookings of the day fill up quickly. Their website also states that they will be closed on bad weather days.
You can book via the Naver link in their Instagram but if that won’t work for you, you can also message them via instagram to book. This is how I did it and they were very quick to respond. The courses are 4,000,/5,000/6,000₩ and if you’re a Pyeongtaek resident you get a 1,000₩ discount. It’s cashless and you’ll pay when you arrive at the course. I showed my military id card as my resident card and got the discount but I can’t guarantee this will work every time.
Heated waiting area. Pretty sure it is also cooled during the summertime.
For foreigners, you start with a safety video in English but Korean speakers had a verbal safety presentation. Then they take you on a short safety course to test out your safety strap and to demonstrate how you move about the course. Very simple! Then you move on to your course with your guide. We were the only 2 booked for the hard course but there were 2 moms doing the normal course and about 6 kids doing the easy course. I was surprised to see so many people in the middle of a Friday afternoon.
The hardest set for me was the rope swinging bridge but after that it was smooth sailing and so fun! I especially love zip lining so being able to do two zip lines in the course was even better. I attached videos below - the zip lines were only 12 seconds long but so much fun. We were the only 2 booked for the hard course during our time slot and it took us just about 30 minutes to go through it. The course graphic says it takes about one hour. I would plan somewhere between the two depending on how many people are in your group.
It was such a fun, inexpensive day date! It would even be a much girls outing or a unit outing for soldiers. You could hop across the street to Prefer for coffee/food before or after, or hike across Buraksan for even more of a work out. There’s a parking lot but it gets pretty full in the afternoons.
I think London will have a blast when we get the chance to take her.
