4 Best Sights in Side Trips from Busan, South Korea

One of the most prominent museums in the country, Gyeongju National Museum is dedicated to the art, history, and treasures of the Silla Kingdom (57 BC–AD 935), with weapons, armor, clothing, pottery, statues, royal crowns, and more on display.  An hour or so browsing its exhibits will give you a deeper appreciation of the civilization that once called Gyeongju its capital. If you really want to understand the Silla period, this should be your first stop in town.

Focusing on regional history, this museum hosts a nice collection of pottery, textiles, clothing, armor, Buddhist statues, old books and scrolls, and a few very impressive royal crowns. A number of exhibits are currently closed to the public, but if you're interested in artifacts from the local culture, its worth an hour or so of your time. It's just a 5-minute taxi ride from Hwanggeum Station.

Originally located in Tongyeong's main Gangguan Harbor, these four replicas of Admiral Yi Sun-shin's famous Geobukseon "Turtle Ships" have been moved to a marina on the edge of town. They're still worth the short taxi ride for anyone interested in Korean history, as these boats were instrumental in destroying the Japanese fleet during the Imjin War of the late 1500s, events made famous by the Korean film Roaring Currents. One of the boats has been transformed into a small, floating museum, and though most of the information placards are in Korean, it's interesting to go onto the ship to get a sense of what it was like for sailors hundreds of years ago.

Geoje was home to the biggest POW camp of the Korean War, at one point housing more than 170,000 Chinese and North Korean prisoners. While the camp is long closed, the site has been transformed into a kind of museum, complete with exhibition halls containing detailed (and sometimes graphic) dioramas meant to give the visitor a feel for how life was for both the prisoners and the guards. There is also some military hardware on the premises, including old tanks. The camp is a fascinating visit for any history buff, a vivid reminder of the brutality unleashed upon Korea just some decades before.