Pohang Through the Lens of Sunrise

Wooden facades cast narrow shadows across Guryongpo Japanese House Street, a preserved historic lane where the past feels close enough to touch. The street is beautiful, yes, but never merely pretty. Its old Japanese-style timber houses recall a painful chapter after the 1883 trade agreement between Joseon and Japan, when Japanese settlers arrived and fishing rights in the region were taken from local Koreans.

I walked slowly here. Forty-seven wooden buildings remain, and their weathered lines make the district a living classroom rather than a frozen backdrop. At Furusatoya, a former restaurant now preserved and used as a teahouse, the mood softened: polished wood, quiet interiors, and tea that seemed to ask for silence before conversation.

The street is also known as a filming location for When the Camellia Blooms, and I understood why cameras love it. Stairs, rooflines, and pockets of sea-town light frame every turn. Still, the most memorable image was not staged. It was the uneasy grace of a place that has chosen to remember.

By afternoon, the light had turned glossy on Pohang Canal, and the water slipped between neighborhoods like a ribbon pulled through the city. Completed in Jan 2014, the canal connects the Dongbin Bridge area with the Hyeongsan River, forming an 8 to 10 km water route when linked with the sea.

What surprised me most was that this was not simply an artificial attraction laid over the city. Pohang Canal restored an older waterway and its ecological setting, bringing back a channel that had once existed. Locals use it like a park, strolling along the banks, while visitors come for the cruise: a gentle, romantic way to watch Pohang rearrange itself in reflections.

From the boat, buildings softened, bridges opened and closed above the water, and the breeze carried that particular harbor-city mix of metal, tide, and dinner beginning somewhere nearby. It was easy to stop chasing the perfect photo. The city was already composing itself.

Evening settled lightly, as if Pohang did not want to end the day too abruptly. I thought back to Homigot's sunrise, to the layered silence of Guryongpo Japanese House Street, to the canal's restored current moving through the city.

A photo trip can make you restless, always looking for the next frame. Pohang did the opposite. It slowed my eye. The best images were not only the dramatic ones but the in-between moments: a cup of tea in an old house, a leash-clipped dog trotting beside the canal, the last light turning water into a long, bright path.