The place I live is called Ilsan. That’s not actually the name of the city – the city is officially called Goyang, but Goyang is more like a consolidated city-county, in US terms, as there are several urban clusters with intervening agricultural land within its boundaries.
There are two city districts (boroughs), West Ilsan (Ilsan-seo-gu) and East Ilsan (Ilsan-dong-gu) which together form the area informally known as Ilsan. The name Ilsan, itself, comes from the train station, I suspect, which is on the main northwest Gyeongui line (Gyeongui means “Capital-to-Sinuiju”, Sinuiju being the city in the northwestern corner of North Korea – so this was the main rail line between Seoul and the Chinese border, prior to Korean partition in 1945).
I remember actually spending time at the Ilsan train station in 1991, when I was garrisoned a few stops northwest of Ilsan at Camp Edwards, in the US Army. At that time, Ilsan was a village-like entity surrounding a single-room wooden structure that was labeled as Ilsan train station.
Now, of course, “Ilsan” has half a million residents – it is one of Korea’s most successful “new cities” (신도시 or planned cities).
I’m writing about this because there seems to be some doubt as to where the name “Ilsan” comes from, even among Koreans. “Il” just means “one,” so the name of the city is “One Mountain.” But there is no mountain nearby called “Ilsan” – and most of Ilsan is pretty flat, actually, although just to the north there are some ridges and peaks in the area called Jungsan and Gobong, and within Ilsan there is a very low hill called Jeongbalsan, where I walk frequently, and on the northeast flank of Jeongbalsan is the Cancer Center.
Both Gobong and Jeongbalsan seem like candidates for the “One Mountain” of the name, but I have decided that seems implausible. Neither of them are positioned quite right, relative to the train station that originally bore the name.
On the other hand, a much more distant mountain, called Simhaksan, seems a likely candidate. On Saturday, on the pedestrian footbridge next to my work, which is a few blocks from Ilsan train station, I snapped this picture.
Looking northwest along Ilsan Road, it shows clearly the single, noticeable peak of Simhaksan in the somewhat hazy distance, about 10 km down the road. I [broken link! FIXME] once went up Simhaksan, from whence you can see North Korea easily – basically it is the only mountain between Ilsan and North Korea, in that particular direction.
That’s definitely One Mountain, I thought.
[daily log: walking, 6 km]