음성큰바위얼굴 조각공원 eumseong large face sculpture park

I was looking at places close to Chungju that I might like to visit and looked Eumseong way. I checked out what attractions it had and noticed some hot springs, which I'm not overly interested in. It seems like every city around here has hot springs, Suanbo, Moongyeong, northern Chungju... But something did catch my interest and that was the large face sculpture park.

Seeing that yesterday was memorial day and I didn't have classes, it was the perfect time for a trip. I managed to convince one person to join me and we were off to the park. It's located in 생극면 Saeng-geuk, which is a part of 음성군 Eumseong. The park itself is about 3km outside of Saeng-geuk, so it's pretty much in the middle of nowhere. The park also happens to share its space with a mental hospital, which made it seem even odder. 


Admission was 6,000 won and we were given an English and Korean booklet with info on the park. It started in 1991 and was worked on by about 400 sculptors over 14 years to create 3,000 sculptures. The park is pretty massive. 

The first thing I noticed were the complimentary umbrellas, not that it was raining, just to shield yourself from the sun.

I was pretty amused by the queen's face. She looked like she was forcing herself to smile at something she was completely disgusted by, but secretly enjoyed, all while having to sneeze. No better way to be immortalized. 

We happened to notice pretty quickly that some, ok most, of the sculptures were a bit wonky, out of proportion, and a bit cartoonish. Sometimes the gender was also a bit ambiguous, sometimes I could tell exactly who people were supposed to be, but often I had to read the descriptions to figure it out. It's definitely a park that emphasizes quantity over quality.

Audrey Hepburn

Che Guevara, with his eyes closed.

Hitler and friends in the political leaders section. There was also a section for Buddha, dinosaurs, writers...

 The description that accompanied an octopus sculpture. Slightly confusing.

The area is huge, and there are tonnes of sculptures all placed closely together, so it's a pretty overwhelming experience. A lot of time, work and money obviously went into making the park. It's just unfortunate how wonky some of the sculptures came out and a little strange that they chose to build the park around a mental hospital. In the end, totally worth the trip.