Pohang
— — the first light, held in two bronze hands.
Not only on a wall.
“A port city on the East Sea, halfway between Busan and the DMZ as the crow flies. Pohang is steel and sunrise: the POSCO works that rebuilt the country's economy on one side, and Homigot on the other — the easternmost cape on the mainland, where two bronze hands rise out of the surf to catch the year's first sun. Walk Yeongildae Beach at six in the morning in November and the city is quiet except for fishermen and the smell of grilled gwamegi. from the studio
Pohang, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Pohang sits on the southeast coast of the Korean Peninsula, in North Gyeongsang Province, about 360 kilometres southeast of Seoul and 80 north of Busan. The city's modern identity was forged in 1968 when POSCO was founded here — the integrated steelworks that became one of the largest in the world and underwrote Korea's industrial rise. Around 500,000 people now live between the steel mills and the beaches. The Hyeongsan River meets the East Sea in the centre of town; Yeongil Bay opens out to the east, with Homigot — the mainland's easternmost cape — anchoring its northern arm.
Homigot, the cape at the northern end of Yeongil Bay, is where Koreans go to watch the year's first sunrise. The Hands of Harmony — a pair of bronze sculptures, one onshore and one rising from the water — were installed for the 2000 millennium and have become the city's signature. The annual Sunrise Festival on the first morning of January draws crowds in the tens of thousands. Most other mornings the cape belongs to the lighthouse keeper, a few photographers, and the gulls. Sunrise comes around 7:30 a.m. in midwinter and just after 5 a.m. in midsummer.
Winter is when Pohang quietly comes into its own. From late November into February, racks of gwamegi — half-frozen, half-dried Pacific herring — appear along the harbours of Guryongpo, a small fishing port south of Homigot. The fish are hung in the cold sea wind for about two weeks and sold by the bundle through the New Year. Spring brings cherry blossoms along the Hyeongsan; summer pulls families to Yeongildae Beach in the city centre; autumn turns the Naeyeonsan ridges, just west of town, into long red corridors of maple.