Hwaseong is a love letter from a son to his father, written in stone. In 1762, Crown Prince Sado was locked in a rice chest by his own father, King Yeongjo, and left to die, one of the darkest episodes in Korean royal history. His son, who became King Jeongjo, never forgot, and he moved his father's tomb to a site near Suwon and built a grand fortress there, completed in 1796, intended perhaps as a new capital. The engineer and scholar Jeong Yak-yong used cranes and pulleys to speed up construction, and the walls, gates, towers and bastions combine Korean, Chinese and Western ideas of fortification. UNESCO listed it in 1997.
The fortress walls run for nearly six kilometres around the old centre of Suwon, climbing over a hill and crossing a stream on a stone floodgate with arches. Walking the walls takes a couple of hours, with views over the city and the surrounding mountains. Parts of the fortress were damaged during the Korean War, but they were rebuilt with the help of a detailed royal record of the original construction, published in 1801, which described every stage of the work, with drawings and accounts.
Suwon is a big city, part of the urban sprawl south of Seoul, and riding here means dealing with heavy traffic, traffic lights and congestion. As elsewhere in South Korea, motorcycles cannot use the expressways, so you will be on the busy national roads and city streets. For better riding, head east or south into the hills and countryside of Gyeonggi province, where the roads are quieter and more scenic. The weather is hot and humid in summer, with heavy rain during the monsoon season, and cold and dry in winter.
Suwon has fuel, food and accommodation everywhere. The city is famous for galbi, beef ribs marinated and grilled at the table, and there is an entire street of galbi restaurants near the fortress. Try also fried chicken, a Korean obsession, with a cold beer, and in the old town, cafés and traditional tea houses offer a break from the bustle.