High maintenance

Drinking in the champagne air as we pass out of the shadow of the pines and into the sunlight that drenches the bald granite summit of Mount Bugak, the colossal city sprawls at our feet.

It's easy for Seoulites to forget - and for visitors never to realise - that just a few minutes' drive above the bustle of the megalopolis' central business district lie spectacular alpine roads, dramatic terraced parks, shaded mountain hiking trails and cool, deer-inhabit-ed forests.

At 342 metres high, Mount Bugak forms the back-drop to central Seoul. In 1392, Yi Taejo, the founder of Korea's last royal dynasty, the Joseon, built his palace, Gyeongbok, in the shadow of its southern slopes. With the mountain guarding the palace's rear, or north, and the broad Han river glittering to its front, or south, Gyeongbok's location offered superb fung shui. The city subsequently grew around the palace - so if there had been no Mount Bugak, there probably would have been no Seoul.

The Japanese, who colonised Korea from 1910 to 1945, built their governor's residence behind Gyeongbok Palace, taking advantage of the location's prestige and abundant . After independence - and also by no accident - the South Korean presidential mansion, the Blue House, was built on the site of the governor general's residence.

Mount Bugak has always, therefore, been a strategic feature and medieval city walls snake over its ridges. A more contemporary threat, though, demands more contemporary defences. With North Korea just 50 kilometres north of the Blue House, the walls and the mountain road that winds around Bugak's slopes are dotted with bases manned by South Korean soldiers.

Paranoia? Hardly. On January 21, 1968, 31 North Korean commandos, tasked with assassinating then-president of South Korea Park Chung-hee (the late father of current president Park Geun-hye) infiltrated this mountain. They made it to within a kilometre of the Blue House before being wiped out in a series of firefights.