Seosan is a fair sized city, but small enough that I felt like I knew my way around town after visiting it weekly for a few months. I kept reading about the Seosan Observation tower on a Seosan Facebook group, but I could not for the life of me figure out where it was! Landon and I explored a nearby Buddhist temple during the week, and we decided to take a little jaunt into Seosan on the weekend to try to find this place! Here is the map of the location of the trailhead: Bonus: There is a small Buddhist temple at the trailhead, and a kid’s playground nearby!
The road up to the trailhead goes up a hill and dead ends at a tiny little Buddhist temple. The stairs start to the left of the temple. From there, we could see the observation tower up on the hill and we knew we had finally found it! We were surprised after climbing the stairs to the top of the hill to find that there was a nice park on top of the hill as well with walking trails and tons of park exercise equipment.
To reach the top of the observation tower, we climbed up what seemed like a million flights of stairs. In reality, it was probably just five flights or so. We could see everything from up there: the whole city of Seosan, the mountains that surround the northern part of the city, everything!
The leaves were just starting to change, but the weather was still very mild, so it was a chill, relaxing way to spend an afternoon. Once we descended from the tower, Landon wanted to try his hand at all of the different pieces of exercise equipment. He REALLY liked the inversion tables…
Asian park exercise machines are pretty fun! For this one, the foot plate moves side to side to work obliques and arms. My favorite is one where the footplate rotates. It feels great on my back! After exploring around the top of the observation tower mountain for awhile, we headed back down to the very bottom of the hill to the kid’s playground. 
Across from the kid’s playground was a neat looking old building. After wandering around a bit, I discovered that it is a small shrine built to venerate the original ancestor of the Korean people. On special days each year, the gates and shrine are opened and offerings are left. I loved the colorful gates!
If you’re based in the Seosan area, check out the observation tower, park and hiking trails!
