Piano Stairs and Viewing Platform

At the rock itself, the coastal path meets an ascent: one hundred fifty-three steps zigzag between the water, the houses of Huinnyeoul, and the platform on the upper level of the slope. Broad colored stripes turned each flight into something like keys, which is where the name Piano Stairs came from. When the rock prevents you from going farther along the sea, this ascent leads to the next stretch of shore on the other side. Above, the local name Isongdo preserves the long-standing comparison between this shore and Songdo Beach across the water.

In January nineteen ninety-nine, people who had lost their jobs after the Asian financial crisis began coming out onto this slope. In South Korea, it is called the International Monetary Fund crisis: businesses were cutting staff, and the Yeongdo district administration began hiring unemployed people for paid public works. One such project was the coastal trail.

Construction lasted twenty-seven months. An average of two hundred sixty people worked here each day, for a total of one hundred five thousand paid work shifts. They cleared the shore, laid the path surface, and routed a three-kilometer trail along the island’s slopes. For the participants, it was temporary income; for officials, it was a way to open an inaccessible stretch of coast for walks.

Right here, a rock prevented the path from continuing close to the water. The builders raised the route to the upper level of the slope: one hundred fifty-three steps zigzag from the shore to the village and the viewing platform. Later, the flights were painted with broad colored stripes resembling keys, and the stairs came to be called the Piano Stairs.

On March thirty-first, two thousand one, the public works ended and the coastal trail opened. Before the passage through the rock ahead appeared, the only way to continue along the sea was to climb these steps and descend on the other side. Now the stairs provide a direct link between the coastal path, the houses of Huinnyeoul, and the platform above; tourists more often linger here for photographs.

The viewing platform is called Isongdo—literally, “the second Songdo Beach.” It is an old local name: Yeongdo residents looked across the water at the well-known Songdo Beach and maintained that their shore was no less impressive. Their comparison remains in the platform’s name, and the work of people who were counted in documents only by shifts remains in the one hundred fifty-three colored steps beneath it.