There are a couple of nice parks within the city of Gwangju. One of them is the 5•18 Memorial Park. There’s a lot to do within the parks space including a cultural center, a temple and Memorial for the May 18 Democratization Movement. I visited the May 18 Democratization Movement behind which you can enter and go underground to an area with another statue and a wall of known names of victims.
The park is very nice but also not the easiest to navigate if you want to get somewhere.
Example, I wanted to get from the Memorial to the temple and couldn’t figure out a direct route, ending up trying a couple different paths before giving up and assuming that maybe the temple was closed off for renovations or repairs.
It was very frustrating to get so close from two different directions but not actually be able to get to it.
What I think ended up happening was that I ended up at the temple, didn’t realize it was the temple due to some light construction because I actually wanted to get to the pretty building behind it but there was no path despite them being right next to each other. I think that was easiest way get to it was from where I had been at the memorial.
There’s also plenty of places here to exercise, play games with friends or dog watch. It seems to be a pretty active park. I saw a lot of people out playing badminton and tennis, sitting on the benches, playing with their dogs and just going for walks and runs along the paths.