Haesindang Park or Penis Park, as referenced by too many traveler blogs, is both a boom and bane to Samcheok-si I’m sure. Like many before me, sculptures like the above are enough of a curio for me to venture out of the way to the coastal city. It’s unfortunate though that the rest of the city’s draws are overshadowed by the park but then again, people might just give the area a miss if it weren’t for Haesindang Park.

For the record, if my Chinese doesn’t fail me, the name of the park draws reference from Poseidon and doesn’t translate to anything phallic. The folklore goes that some fisherman was lost at sea and his lovelorn wife was so depressed, when she died, the village didn’t yield fertile land until some wise guy decided to offer some uhm, seeds of goodwill.

This Damsel-in-distress

Despite its themes, the park is quite a family affair with kids and adults alike, feeling up the sculptures and taking breaks on stools like these -

And if you’ve got big balls, benches like these -

Despite how people assume that the sculptures here are uncharacteristically bold for an Asian country, phallic objects and images have quite a long history as fertility symbols in Asia. There’s the Kanamara Matsuri in Japan and penises are used to ward off evil in Bhutan although not so much in dark alleys.

History lesson at the Park Museum

The verdict is still out though on whether, if you draw happy faces like these on your appendages, virgin maidens will be appeased.

How does one get there? There are buses to Samcheok from the bus terminals in Seoul. The tourist information hotline might be a better guide than whatever is printed because bus schedules do differ. Getting there the recommended way took me 4 hours and about $25, an hour longer and $5 more than it took to get back. From Samcheok, it’s a bit trickier – the buses run only a couple of times a day and you’ll have to be sure there’s a bus back to town.