Word-of-Mouth Hotspots Covered in Garbage and Maggots

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With the summer being unusually hot, many people have opted to visit cool valleys instead of crowded beaches. However, our reporting team visited valleys around the metropolitan area that have gained popularity through word of mouth, only to find them suffering from illegally dumped trash.

Reporter Kim Gyu-ri has the story from the scene.

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This is Sillim Valley at Gwanaksan Mountain, which went viral on social media this summer.

With knee-high water, it is the perfect spot for children to ride tubes and enjoy playing in the water.

Accessible by public transportation, the number of visitors has more than doubled compared to last year, but sights that make visitors cringe have also increased.

A leftover watermelon is dumped whole in a corner of the valley, already swarming with bugs.

[Gwanak Sillim Valley Safety Guard: A lot of people come to drink alcohol at night. Often, it fills up four of the largest trash bags. This was probably eaten early this morning.]

We visited Myeongji Valley in Gapyeong, Gyeonggi Province, a favorite among vacationers, early in the morning along with valley keepers from the local government who set out to collect trash.

Trash is scattered around vacationers enjoying the water, and leftover food is even discarded in its containers.

[Gapyeong Myeongji Valley Keeper: Even kimchi containers left like this. The food they were eating. Watermelon. Good thing it is not kimchi. Ugh, the smell.]

Various fruits are rotting away in boxes, alongside ramyeon, snack bags, beer cans, and even used baby diapers.

[Gapyeong Myeongji Valley Keeper: People stuff trash into rock piles and just leave it as it is, which leads to things like maggots coming out.]

Some people even leave behind bulky disposable tents and large inner tubes.

[Gapyeong Myeongji Valley Keeper: They bring things that are likely to break to play with, and when they leave, they just dump everything like this.]

We cleaned up with the valley keepers for about 30 minutes, and 10 50-liter trash bags were filled to the brim.

Some vacationers even cut through iron fences to enter restricted areas illegally.

[Yoon Ho-young / River Management Team, Gapyeong County Office: They climb over the fences. This is a cliff here. We blocked it off because you could die if you fall, but after we blocked it, they cut through it to get in.]

Signs prohibiting cooking and camping everywhere are of no use, prompting special crackdowns at some valleys this summer.

[Nowon District Office River Management Team: We consider until the end of August to be peak season, so we are deploying personnel accordingly.]

A mature civic consciousness is needed to keep our precious valleys—which help us forget the murderous heat wave—clean and safe.

(Photo: Lee Byung-joo | Video Editing: Ahn Yeo-jin | VJ: Noh Jae-min | Design: Cho Soo-in)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.