Pohang Travel: Chilpo Beach with Kids

Chilpo Beach is a white stretch of sand about a 30-minute drive (13 km) north of Pohang’s downtown area. It’s less crowded than the popular Yeongildae Beach and annually hosts a jazz festival in summer. 

This is my first post in attempting to review beaches from a parenting perspective, so feel free to suggest other review categories! 

Access 

Chilpo Beach is in an isolated and quiet area. You can park very close to the beach on a non-crowded day, and there are large parking lots all around. It’s not too much of a slog from the car, laden with all your beach gear, to the shore. A growing pine forest lines the beach. 

We did end up walking longer in the hot sand than expected, as the part of the beach nearest the public toilets was being used for fishing and lobster traps. We walked all the way to the northern end of the beach and set up there. 

Facilities 

The public toilet is located toward the middle of the beach. There is a health center at the northern end, but it was locked and the toilets were not open. It did, however, have running water to wash your feet on the way out. The cabins of Pine Hotel line the beach. The only thing immediately adjacent to the beach other than the hotel is parking lots. Some convenience stores and coffee shops may open up in the official summer season but were closed when we visited in early July. 

Camping 

People were set up camping at the northern and southern ends of the beach, under the pine groves. It didn’t look like official sites, just a come and claim situation. If you’d be happy camping directly on the beach, you could get more privacy. 

Safety 

The most important thing about a beach to me is how practical it is as a parent. I’m not one who just enjoys sitting on a beach, I endure it because I see the joy my kids have when playing in the waves and the sand. Being on the east coast and not protected by a bay, Chilpo Beach has a decent amount of surf. The safest thing for the kids was to jump in the waves without going too deep in the water. We didn’t see anyone actually swimming, but several families with young kids came out to wade in the surf. 

Fishermen held claim to much of the beach, so we had to find a spot where nobody was casting a line or had set up traps. I wouldn’t have gone completely in the water here, as it seemed to drop off quickly and the surf was rough, but the kids had a few hours of fun getting totally wet anyway. 

Cleanliness 

Without any natural protection, Chilpo Beach gets all the trash that the ocean has to give back to us. The beach was mostly clean, and trash all looked to have washed up recently, not been sitting on the beach for weeks or longer. During the two hours we spent there, things kept washing up: a large rope, take out containers, plastic bags, a basket. It was a bit disconcerting as it all floated in on beds of seaweed. However, the sand itself was clean and we didn’t see any sharp objects on things to be particularly wary of. 

Scenery

You see mostly open sea, a few lighthouses in the distance, a pretty seaside trail along cliffs, and some rigs in the distance. Overall, it had a wilder feel than the beaches closer to Pohang, which feel like they are in the middle of an industrial complex. This beach is surrounded by pine forests, and you can see paragliders overhead. Some even land on the beach. 

Shell Collecting 

This wasn’t a great beach for shell collecting. If we come again, we’ll bring trash collecting gear instead! 

Relaxability 

On a scale of 5, with 5 being the calm, clear waters where the kids can wade out forever, nobody is bothering you, it’s quiet, and you might actually read a book, and 1 being surf too rough to let the kids near the water, non-stop hustling, and a general sense of “Why did I bring my kids here?” Chilpo Beach makes a 4. The kids could not go deep in the water, and I had to keep a constant eye on them, but it was really quiet and we had plenty of space to ourselves. 

If I hadn’t been the only adult, I could have definitely taken a nap! 

It was also nice to not have to walk too far to the car or the toilet, and to have an easy way to wash off some sandy feet before getting back in the car. 

Overall – 3 out of 5 Stars

I won’t say it’s our favorite beach, but the kids had been asking for bigger waves and Chilpo allowed them to play in bigger waves and stay safe. If we humans could stop using so much single-use plastics which get thrown into the ocean, the rating would be a 4. I do worry about how much more prevalent it is now to see plastics washing in on wild beaches, and I feel conflicted. We want our children to experience nature, untouched and beautiful, but we also want them to know the truth of what’s happening to our world and why. 

My kids showed they have a well of emotion big enough to experience the joy of the waves, and the grief of the trash. My daughter kept asking, “Doesn’t this make you sad?” with real pain in her eyes, and then a few minutes later, running out to build a sand castle. We spent two years in India, not finding any beach as clean as Chilpo Beach, and these experiences inform our discussions. I too need to make room for the conflicting emotions as I seek to promote climate action, enjoy nature, and keep children safe.