Taejongdae

Where it sits. Taejongdae is the wooded headland at the southern tip of Yeongdo, the island district of Busan that sits across a short channel from the old city centre and is reached by bridge. The park covers a couple of square kilometres of dense evergreen forest ending in cliffs that drop directly into open water; the sea beyond is the entrance to Busan's harbour, so container ships and fishing boats pass continuously. On a genuinely clear day the Japanese island of Tsushima is visible on the horizon about fifty kilometres away, which is a reliable way to understand why this coast has been a strategic and commercial crossing point for two thousand years.

Name and rock. The name is traditionally traced to King Taejong Muyeol of Silla, the seventh-century monarch who set the unification of the Three Kingdoms in motion and is said to have practised archery on this headland. The site is registered as a Busan monument and forms part of the city's national geopark. Geology is the reason: the cliffs expose thick beds of Cretaceous sedimentary rock, and at Sinseondae — the terrace of the immortals — a wave-cut platform sits below tilted, banded strata that read like a diagram. A pillar of rock nearby is called Mangbuseok, the rock of the wife watching for her husband, from a legend about a woman who waited here for a man taken across the sea and never returned.

What is actually there. A single road loops about four kilometres through the forest, and a road train with open sides, known locally as the Danubi, runs it with three stops: the observatory, the lighthouse and the temple. Yeongdo Lighthouse was first lit in 1906 and rebuilt in 2004 with a gallery, an exhibition space and a terrace over the rocks. Below it, steps descend to the wave platform where women divers, the haenyeo, sell sea squirt, abalone and raw fish from plastic tubs and a stack of seawater buckets — a scene that has changed remarkably little in decades. Taejongsa, a modest temple in the woods, sits above the loop. Cruise boats run out from a small quay for a view of the cliffs from the water, and a pebble beach called Jagalmadang lies at the eastern side. The observatory building above the cliffs holds a café and a wide glazed terrace, and from it the cluster of rock islets known as Oryukdo can be picked out to the east across the harbour mouth.

On screen, and the bridge to the north. Yeongdo's contribution to Korean cinema sits at the other end of the island, and it is substantial. Yeongdo Bridge, opened in 1934 as the peninsula's first bascule bridge, became the agreed meeting point for families separated during the Korean War — displaced people really did post names and notices there — and that history is the emotional spine of Ode to My Father, the 2014 film directed by Yun Je-kyoon, which follows one family from the Hungnam evacuation of December 1950 through six decades of Korean life. It sold around fourteen million tickets, among the highest totals in the country's box-office history, and its shop scenes were filmed in Gukje Market a few minutes across the water, where the premises used in the film still trades under its own name. The bridge's lifting span was restored and has been raised daily since 2013. Between that bridge, the market, Jagalchi's fish stalls and this headland, Yeongdo and Nampo-dong form the densest concentration of film locations in Busan.

Reading the landscape. The forest is mostly evergreen — pine, camellia, oak — so the park stays green through winter, and camellias flower from late winter into early spring. The cliffs face south and east, which makes sunrise the strongest light of the day and leaves the observatory in flat glare at midday. Wind is a constant, spray reaches the lower platforms in any swell, and the park closes sections during typhoon warnings in the late-summer months. The loop is a genuine walk rather than a stroll, with sustained gradients between the observatory and the lighthouse.

Getting there and timing. Buses 8, 30 and 88 run to the park entrance from Nampo-dong and Busan Station in twenty to thirty minutes; there is no admission fee, and the road train is ticketed separately. Weekends bring long queues for the train, and walking the loop is often quicker. Spring and autumn are the comfortable seasons, and clear post-frontal days give the long view toward Tsushima. Paths near the entrance and the road train are manageable with assistance, but the descents to the wave platform and the lighthouse rocks involve long flights of steps and are not suitable for wheelchairs.