Where is Yeonggwang?

ESL TEACHERS: Yeonggwang is in a rural part of South Korea. There are less than 150 words about Yeonggwang written on Wikipedia, so you can probably guess it's prettty small. Yeonggwang is within the Jeollanam-do Province on the southwest coast. If you're looking at a map of Korea, follow interstate 15 straight south.

I guess the first distinction I should make is that there is Yeonggwang county and Yeonggwang the town (Yeonggwang-eup). I don't actually know the population of either, but hopefully one of my fellow teachers can post that information.

I live in Yeonggwang-eup. The nearest city is Gwangju which has over a million people. There is an express bus that will get you from Yeonggwang-eup to Gwangju in about 50 minutes. There is an E-Mart (Korea's equivalent to Target) near the bus terminal in Gwangju so I have often gone there to do some shopping for things you can't find in Yeonggwang. A little further from the bus terminal is the downtown area called Geumnamno. Geumnamno is home to a few western-friendly bars such as The Speakeasy, The Crazy Horse, and The German Bar.

Yeonggwang is just under 4 hours from Seoul. From the Yeonggwang express bus terminal you can take a bus directly to Seoul's main bus terminal for 23,600 or 16,000 Won (think of the price difference as a first class bus vs. a second class bus). So, you can reach Seoul, but it's a long way for just a day or even overnight trip.