Choihu Camping Hanam sits a short fifteen minutes from our front door, and we treat it like a back garden with rentals. We just wrapped two nights there with our nine and ten-year-old, and on day two my younger sister drove down with her two kids. What follows is the kind of write-up I wish I had read before booking. Real prices, the actual drive, what the kids ended up doing, and a few honest gripes about how busy the place gets on a sunny weekend.
Why This Hanam Glamping Spot Has Become Our Weekend Default
Most weekends we have a short list of places we cycle through. Choihu Camping Hanam keeps clawing its way to the top of that list. It’s close enough to drive without packing snacks. Sites are pre-pitched so we don’t haul tent poles around. And the staff run actual programs for the kids in the afternoon.
We’ve stayed at Naepo Camping Square a couple of times for the wider field feel, and it’s a different trip. Choihu is dense, social, and a little chaotic. It feels closer to a small village than a quiet forest. Some readers might want the quiet forest, and that’s not what this place is. But for a family with kids who get bored after dinner, the noise and the crowd are honestly part of the appeal.
We also book Choihu when our schedule is tight. The fifteen-minute drive means we can pull in around four on a Friday and still get the kids in their swimsuits before sundown. When we booked the trip to Misari Park last summer, the prep took the whole afternoon. Choihu compresses that prep window down to about thirty minutes, which is the difference between a weekend that feels like a trip and a weekend that feels like a chore.
The Drive From Hanam That Almost Feels Like Fake Travel
We live in Hanam. The camp sits in the same city. Door to gate, we clocked just under fifteen minutes on a Friday afternoon, and that included the stretch where the road narrows past the convenience store. Coming from Seoul, the drive runs roughly an hour off Olympic-daero, longer if you hit the weekend bottleneck near Misa.
Because it’s so close to the city, the camp pulls a heavy day-trip crowd. People who don’t sleep over still come for picnics and the events. We learned to time our arrival a bit later, around three in the afternoon, so the lunch wave has thinned out by the time we pull into the lot. If you arrive at noon on a Saturday, you’ll be circling for parking.
Once you’re inside the gate, the grounds open up into a long courtyard with food stalls on one side and rows of pre-pitched glamping tents on the other. Trees line the central walking path. A small wooden train cart, the one the camp host uses for events later, sits parked near the courtyard entrance. It looks a bit kitschy at first, but the kids spot it within thirty seconds and start asking when the games start.
What Our Glamping Site Looked Like When We Walked Up
Check-in was at the small building near the entrance. The woman behind the counter handed us a printed map with the lot number circled and a quick rundown of where the wash area sits. Our spot was a pre-pitched glamping tent on a wooden deck, with a low fence, a folding table, and four camp chairs already set up. Two single beds inside, plus enough floor space for a blow-up mattress.
Behind us was another family unloading coolers. Across the gravel path, a couple was setting up speakers. It was loud in a way that felt cheerful, not annoying. Our older one immediately walked off to scout the camp store. Our younger one was already crouched at the edge of the deck looking at a beetle.
There’s a small on-site store with ice, charcoal, water, ramyeon, and the usual camping pantry items. Prices are fair given the location, only a few hundred won above what you’d pay at a corner shop in Hanam. We grabbed an extra bag of charcoal for the second night, since we knew the kids would beg for one more grill round. Behind the store is a tiny snack counter that sells corn dogs and slush drinks, which we used as a bribe currency for the rest of the trip.
Day One Dinner With Shrimp and Pork Belly on the Grill
We had stopped at a fish counter in Hanam earlier in the day. We walked away with a tray of head-on shrimp, two pounds of samgyeopsal (Korean pork belly), and a small box of mussels. The shrimp went on first. My wife is faster than me at flipping them, so I gave up and just watched.
Then the pork went on. Our older daughter was busy slicing kimchi straight onto the grate, a habit she picked up at her grandmother’s place last winter. Charred kimchi with pork belly is one of those flavors that survives any picky eater. Her younger brother was less interested in the meat and more interested in whether he could eat just the rice and a bit of seaweed.
By the time the sun dropped behind the trees, we’d finished half a tray of shrimp, most of the pork, and a thermos of corn tea. The kids each had a cup of strawberry juice. Our daughter declared the dinner “the best meat we ever cooked,” though she has said that at maybe three other camps this year, so the bar is generous.
Our neighbor family had brought a cooler stocked with abalone, and the smell that drifted over once they fired up their grill was unfair. I sent the kids over with a small bowl of our pork, in the universal camp trade. We came back with two grilled abalone. Trade economics at Choihu Camping Hanam is informal but effective.
The Toad Our Younger One Wouldn’t Let Go Of
After dinner, our younger one wandered toward the wash area behind the deck and came back two minutes later carrying a small plastic bottle. Inside was a toad. Small, slightly grumpy, with a wet film of bottle water around it.
He named it within ten seconds. He gave it a back-story (“escaped from a frog farm”). And he was already negotiating to bring it home, which was not happening. We let him keep the bottle on the deck overnight, on the condition that he would release it the next morning at the same spot.
He released it. He cried a little. But he also spent the next day looking for it under every rock, so the trip basically had a side quest from that moment on. His sister joined the search effort at one point, mostly to tease him about the name he had given the toad.
The Rock Area Behind the Camp at Night
At the back of the camp there’s a rock garden with red and pink uplighting that switches on after sunset. Kids gather there with their phones to take pictures. Parents trail behind with flashlights. There’s an unofficial routine of climbing one specific large rock for a photo. Our daughter and her cousins did the climb maybe three times before we had to drag them back to the tent for bedtime.
The lighting changes color slowly, from red to pink to a soft purple, on a cycle that takes about a minute. A few kids sat on the rocks waiting for the color they wanted before taking the picture. It’s one of the small touches that makes Choihu Camping Hanam feel curated rather than thrown together.
Day Two When My Younger Sister and Her Two Kids Drove Down
My younger sister lives about an hour away. She has two kids of her own, one our older daughter’s age and one a year younger, and she had been threatening to join us at a camp for months. She finally pulled into the lot around eleven in the morning on day two.
Adding her family meant an extra-person fee. Choihu charges ₩20,000 per extra adult and ₩10,000 per extra child for a non-overnight day visit. With one adult plus two kids, that added ₩40,000 to our second-day cost. I’ll do the full math at the bottom, but the short version is that two nights for our family came to ₩180,000 base, and the visiting trio bumped us up by ₩40,000.
She brought a watermelon, which disappeared in about eleven minutes flat. Her older boy went off with our daughter and a soccer ball. Her younger one latched on to our nine-year-old, and the two of them refused to be separated for the rest of the day. The cousin pair routine is something we miss between trips, since we don’t see her family often during the school year.
By noon the courtyard had started filling with day-visit families. Picnic blankets spread out under the trees. A line formed at the corn dog counter. Choihu Camping Hanam runs hotter as a social space on Saturdays than most camps we’ve been to. If you came for solitude, this is the part where you would start regretting your booking.
The Bingo and Pizza Station That Hands Out Firewood
Around two in the afternoon, the staff rolled out the small wooden train cart with prize bundles on it. A microphone crackled to life from the open courtyard. Within ten minutes there were maybe forty kids loosely assembled around a host who was clearly used to running these. Bingo first, then a small pizza-making station off to the side, then a dance round at the end.
Our older daughter won a round of bingo, which earned her a tightly wrapped bundle of firewood. She paraded it back to the tent like a trophy. Her brother got nothing in bingo but two slices from the pizza table, which is honestly the better outcome from a nine-year-old’s perspective. He came back with sauce on his shirt and zero regret.
Why the Prize Pool at Choihu Camping Hanam Actually Works
The prize bundles are practical. Firewood, charcoal packs, a small bag of marshmallows. Nothing fancy, but everything you’d actually use that night. The whole event setup pushes kids into the courtyard and parents into the chairs at the edge. It’s a nice break from camps where parents end up running the games themselves.
The Dancing Round We Did Not See Coming
The final game was a dance contest. The host called up a wave of kids to copy a sequence of moves. Our daughter volunteered with zero hesitation. She was the only girl in pink shorts in the front line, and she did the routine straight through without breaking. She didn’t win.
But she walked back to us grinning and announced that she’d entered a contest and that was “basically winning,” which is the kind of ten-year-old logic that I can’t argue with. Her cousin tried to copy the routine on the deck afterwards and got tangled up halfway. There was a video taken. It will be brought out at family gatherings for at least the next decade.
Foam Party as the Cleanest Mess Our Kids Made All Year
On day two the camp ran a foam party in the open courtyard. Industrial bubble machine, maybe knee-high foam at peak, kids in swimsuits or quick-dry clothes, screaming. It started around 3 p.m. and ran for roughly half an hour. Our younger one ran in immediately. His sister hung back for two minutes and then went in.
The foam was scented and felt soft on the skin. When the bubbles popped on contact, they left almost nothing behind. No soap film, no stickiness. After the round ended, the staff handed out small towels and pointed parents toward the wash basins.
Our daughter said afterward that her ears were full of bubbles for about ten minutes, which was less fun. But she also said she’d do it again the next day if they ran it. They didn’t run it the next day, so this is something to time around if foam parties matter to your trip.
Foam timing changes by season, and the staff don’t post the schedule in advance on weekdays. If your kids care about catching one, call the camp directly. Saturday afternoons are reliable from late spring through early autumn, based on what other parents at our neighbor site told us.
The Water Plaza and the Toad Chase That Lasted an Hour
On the far side of the camp there’s a small water plaza with rocks and a low fountain. Kids bring water guns. On a hot afternoon, the place gets jammed. We swung by around four-thirty when the foam party crowd had thinned, and there was room to sit on the rocks while the kids ran around.
This is also where my younger one tried to find his toad again. He didn’t find the same one. He found a different one, and was satisfied. His cousin showed up with a net from the camp store and the three of them spent an hour quietly turning over rocks together while the adults sat in the shade.
One small note. The water in the plaza is fairly shallow but the rocks are slippery if your kids run. Both of mine slipped at least once. Nothing serious, but plan for wet socks, and maybe pack a second set of shoes. We always carry a spare pair when we travel with the kids in the warm months. Once they get water in their socks at one a.m. on a camp deck, the rest of the night is a disaster.
Family Camp Rating Card
Two nights of notes, two kids of feedback, and one visiting sister with her own data points. Here is how Choihu Camping Hanam scored across the dimensions we usually track. Site Privacy takes the biggest hit, since the camp is dense and the weekend crowd is loud. But that same density is exactly what makes the camp work for kids who need playmates within twenty steps of the tent.
- ⭐ Family Friendliness 4.5 / 5. Staff run real programs, and kids find each other within an hour.
- ⭐ Age Fit (9 to 10 yrs) 5 / 5. Almost perfectly tuned to our two.
- ⭐ Safety & Access 4 / 5. Flat ground, lots of foot traffic, parking gets tight on weekends.
- ⭐ Value for Money 4 / 5. Base rate is fair, extra-person fees add up if you host visitors.
- ⭐ Site Privacy 3 / 5. Close neighbors and weekend music carry, no buffer between tents.
- ⭐ Overall 4.2 / 5.
Quick Reference for the Drive and Booking
Choihu sits in southeastern Hanam, just off the main loop that runs toward the river. From central Seoul it’s about an hour by car. From Misa, fifteen minutes. The lot is small, so weekend arrivals after noon will find themselves queued. Reservations open about a month ahead through the camp’s official site, and prime weekends in May, June, and September go within a few days.
Cancellation policy is strict in the high season. Up to seven days out you can get a full refund, after that you forfeit one night. We’ve never had to cancel, but a neighbor at our last visit had to forfeit when his kid got sick, and the loss stuck with him.
- 📍 Address. Sangsan-gok-ro, Hanam-si, Gyeonggi-do
- 🗺️ Map. Google Maps
- 🚗 From Seoul. About an hour off Olympic-daero
- 🅿️ Parking. On-site lot, free, fills up by noon on weekends
- 💰 Base rate. ₩90,000 per night for a pre-pitched glamping site (4-person)
- 💰 Extra person. ₩20,000 per adult, ₩10,000 per child
- 🎂 Age range. Works well from age 4 up. Ours are 9 and 10.
- 🍴 Food. Bring your own. On-site store covers ice, charcoal, ramyeon.
- 🚼 Stroller. Deck and gravel path are uneven. Stroller doable but bumpy.
If you want to get a feel for the format before booking, the Wikipedia entry on glamping gives a quick overview of how it works. The VisitKorea regional page on Gyeonggi-do lists nearby attractions you can chain into the trip.
Day Three and the Last Hour Before We Drove Out
On day three the camp emptied early. We did one slow lap of the place before checkout, mostly so the kids could say goodbye to their cousins. Our younger one walked over to the rock where he’d found his first toad. He stood there for about a minute. He didn’t say anything. Then he turned around and asked when we were coming back.
I checked the booking site that night. There was one open weekend in early July. I clicked through to confirm Choihu Camping Hanam for the third time this season, and I held my finger over the button for maybe two seconds before booking. That delay used to be longer. It’s gotten shorter every visit.