Goso-dong Mural Village

The murals turned a hillside into a route

In 2009, Goso-dong residents began painting a 1,004-metre alley to help revive Yeosu’s old center. The number supplied the name: 1004 is read cheonsa in Korean, the same word used for “angel.” What began as a neighborhood mural project gradually became a walking route across the steep residential hillside above the port

The path climbs through ordinary houses and retaining walls, then repeatedly opens toward Yeosu Port. Near the upper end, Gosodae gives the hill real military weight: it is an artillery position overlooking the South Sea where Admiral Yi Sun-sin issued commands during the Imjin War. Its 1947 monument house contains three memorial steles. The murals lead toward a historic site that existed long before the painted route

Some walls belong unmistakably to Yeosu

One section is devoted to Yeosu-born cartoonist Huh Young-man, with characters from his work gathered around the Huh Young-man Mural Gallery. Another uses tile murals to trace Admiral Yi Sun-sin’s life and pairs them with old photographs of the city

Further uphill, the route reaches Opodae Park, the highest point in the mural village. During the Japanese colonial period, a cannon here signalled noon; today the same height works as an observatory over Yeosu. Nearby Moonlight Gallery is an actual indoor exhibition hall, open as a free permanent gallery with historical and contemporary photographs of the city. Those three stops — cartoon gallery, noon-cannon site, photo gallery — break the climb into very different kinds of local memory

Four gates stitch the hill into the old city

Yeosu identifies four main ways into the mural route: from Jinnamgwan, Yi Sun-shin Square, the street-food market and maritime park, and Jongpo. Each entrance changes the walk because the neighborhood sits on a real slope

Starting near the harbor means climbing first and repeatedly turning back toward the water. Coming from the upper old-city side turns the same alleys into a descent toward the port. Cars fit badly into the narrow residential lanes, so the four gates work less like attraction entrances than points where the old city simply begins to tilt upward

Before you go

The route crosses a lived residential neighborhood, and the steep grade matters more than the nominal mural length. Current official Yeosu pages disagree on the expanded route’s exact total length and sector count, so the four gate locations and named sections are more reliable orientation points than one published distance