Opened in 2019, the Mokpo Marine Cable Car runs 3.23 kilometers between Mt. Yudalsan and Gohado Island (2.414 km overland and 820 m over water), reaching a maximum height of 155 meters — making it, at once, the longest and the highest cable car line in South Korea. The line runs 55 cabins in total, including 40 standard cabins and 15 glass-floored "crystal" cabins. The cable car itself is thoroughly 21st-century infrastructure, but the two points it connects happen to line up precisely with the two 16th-century stories told earlier in this series: one end sits at Mt. Yudalsan, home to Noijeokbong, where Yi Sun-sin disguised a rock as a mountain of grain; the other end sits at Gohado Island, where he spent 108 days regrouping his fleet after the Battle of Myeongnyang.
In other words, during the ten-odd minutes it takes to ride across the water, travelers are — whether they realize it or not — retracing, from the air, two sites Yi Sun-sin once moved between by land and sea. The ride is worth taking simply for the views of the city and the archipelago beyond it, but knowing the history of the two endpoints adds a different weight to what's passing beneath you. A 21st-century cable car, laid directly on top of a 400-year-old story about a disguised rock and 108 days of quiet preparation.