Travellers' Checks | Pokemon puts Sokcho on the South Korean tourist map, just as new Ramada opens

You may never have heard of Sokcho. I must admit that I hadn’t, until I noticed by chance that a new Ramada – apparently the South Korean seaside city’s first international hotel brand – opened there in July.

A couple of hours by bus from Seoul, Sokcho’s main draws were, until recently, its proximity to the Seoraksan National Park, its hot springs, fish market and restaurants – and its use as a filming location for the popular Korean television drama Autumn in My Heart. But in a case of perfect timing for Ramada, its opening coincided with the discovery that Sokcho was the only place in game-crazy South Korea that Pokemon Go could be played, as it lies just outside the grid that covers a nationwide government ban on the use of Google Maps data in the country. Consequently, hordes of Koreans downloaded Pokemon Go from overseas app stores and Google Play, and descended on the city en masse, filling every bus and quadrupling hotel occupancy.

“All I did was walk around for tens of kilometres to play a game,” one eager player was reported as confessing. “But I’m more satisfied with this than any other trip. I would still be in Sokcho had it not been for an urgent issue.”

Illustrated journeys Explorers’ Sketchbooks: The Art of Discovery & Adventure presents a remarkably vivid selection of illustrations – from doodling to fine art – borrowed from the journals and notebooks of 70 adventurous travellers.

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