Hello friends!
And welcome to another video.
This week, we're going to be going to a Korean cheese theme park.
Yes, you heard that right...
Cheese.
So a few months ago, while we were planning our trip to East Asia,
I stumbled upon a few articles about a cheese theme park in Imsil, South Korea.
And immediately, I was intrigued.
I mean, mainly because I love cheese!
I like gouda, I like goat cheese, and a good mozzarella never hurt.
So I was extremely curious as to what goes on at a cheese theme park, and how much of it is edible.
However, after doing more research, I'm still not sure I really know.
Because besides those few articles written by people who I don't think have ever been to the park,
there's not a ton of info out there.
But based on what I could figure out,
and what Google Auto-translate helped me figure out,
I do know that there are 32 acres filled with cheese shaped buildings,
a cheese palace, a cheese slide, and cheese making classes.
So I figured we had to check it out for ourselves.
Now Seoul, South Korea was stop #2 for us on our Asia trip after Tokyo,
where we also shot and produced a couple of videos.
And while in Seoul, we stayed in the Myeongdong area,
which is like a somewhat tourist-y, but also super fun neighborhood...
...with a lot of shopping alleyways, street food and skincare stores.
But as good as the food was in Myeongdong...
"Oooohhh.....my word!"
...we were really craving some cheese.
Now as we mentioned, the cheese theme park is in a town called Imsil,
which is about a three hour train ride south of Seoul.
And to make sure we didn't just get lost in the Korean countryside,
we were aided by our friend Hoju Sara, who is a Seoul-based Youtuber who makes videos in Korean...
...as well as videos in English.
She and her cameraman had been helping us produce our videos in Korea as well as acting as our proverbial
guides while we were there.
-I think it looks amazing.
-I kinda look like Yoda
So they had let the park know that we were coming and that they were also coming with us.
And to get to the park and back in one day we had to catch a very early train
So we got up at 7 a.m
and jumped into a taxicab to get to Yongsan station
Now on the way, Tyler made friends with our cab driver and almost accidentally gave our camera to him
Good, yeah!
I think Tyler was a little lost in translation.
Thank you. No, no.
Our driver also had a pair of scissors in the car that he used to trim
some of Tyler's leg hair, but unfortunately, we have no footage of that
He did eventually give us our camera back and dropped us off at the train station
Overall, he was pretty cool. 
-You ready for cheese?
-I'm ready for cheese!
I'm ready for the cheese!
-Is this place even real? 
-I don't know.
Yeah, okay it's real then.
-So, there is someone there doing something.
-Yeah.
-So you'll just get your make up done.
-Yes.
-You'll just barely finish your makeup.
-Yeah.
-Ah, let's do it.
-Are you roasting me right now?
So after wandering around and grabbing some coffee at the station
We hopped on the train and began our lengthy ride down the Korean Peninsula. Just fancying myself up for the cheese
that cheese could be the new tea.
-Oh my God
Give me the cheese
And after many stops, failed nap attempts, and a few more hours,
our destination finally arrived
So we hopped off the train
We have arrived
And quickly realized that we were not in Seoul anymore
Metaphorically speaking
Are we like the only people that got off the train?
There's like 12 people. Okay. Got it
-Some people also got on
-Really?
-Maybe they're out of here
Something we also noticed almost right away
is that the cheese theme in Imsil is not just contained within the park
-Oh, yeah?
Like cheese was everywhere
including on the taxi that we took from the station to the actual theme park,
which, as we drove up,
was looking pretty legit
So we got out of the car and made landfall,
or should I say Swiss fall?
Okay, so we are at the Imsil cheese theme park now with Sara aka Hoju Sara
Did I say that right?
-Close enough
-Close enough?
Close enough?
Ah, yes. So this is the aforementioned Sara
She was also on the train with us and we were going to introduce her on the train,
but then the train got quite crowded,
so I felt like, you know, we'll just keep her a secret until now
Sara is also Australian in case anyone is wondering about the accent
-See there you go
-Now after a quick initial survey of the park, this place is pretty huge
It's built on like a big hill,
so there's a fair amount of climbing required & it has a
large circular path that leads you to the different attractions
From my count,
there are two cheese-shaped structures,
a bunch of cute, sort of European-style buildings,
and a giant cheese palace in the middle,
with a large Versailles-style garden out front that has some sort of Renaissance replica sculptures
There are also many character tableaus throughout the park,
some that feature familiar faces
-Do the Smurfs know these are here?
and some that seem to be Imsil's own original IP
Is that cheese making cheese?
What kind of witchcraft is this?
Like this crown head cheese guy who is displayed everywhere
and where they don't put that dude,
they just add some, like, Swiss holes to things
to bring a little cheese to the decour
There's a lot to see
A lot of cats I've noticed in the last, like, ten minutes
I'm not sure if the cheese brings the mice and then the mice brings the cats,
but there were a lot of cats
But before we could really take off and explore the whole place,
we had signed up to participate in a few cheese experiences
I think we should go. Yeah. Yeah, we're running late
They're up like this hill, they're like somewhere over there
So we've scurried across the park to the experience hall
I had signed us up for Experience Course C,
which included pizza making, as well as two different
cheese making classes
And we arrived just in time to wash our hands
and put on some aprons
It's why I look like a decoration
And then we were whisked into the classroom
Now I will say that although we didn't know exactly what the cheese park was gonna be like,
I did sort of think it was going to be like a wine-tasting moment,
like going to a vineyard, but for cheese
But immediately after walking into the room for our pizza making class,
I realized I was oh so wrong
I think we were definitely the oldest people in the classroom
that weren't also accompanied by a child
There was a group of boisterous preteens in the corner,
but we were a good 15 years older than them
The other thing besides the age demo that sort of surprised me
was that the cheese instructor at the front of the room had a microphone headset on
and was sort of shouting instructions at us?
Very rapidly and in Korean, of course,
so Sara and her cameraman were sort of scrambling to translate what was going on
So all of that aside,
we started making our pizza
which included flattening the dough they gave us
and then brushing the edges with cheese oil
After that it was sauce time
And we used our ladles to spread it around,
which Sarah seemed to be a natural at
After that, we drizzled on our cheese and our meats
and then we were directed to start cutting our vegetables,
with surprisingly sharp knives, which startled both Tyler and me
and after adding a variety of fix ins including potato,
we were pretty much done with our pizzas
So we posed with our finished pies...
...and then plated them to go into the oven
Now it turned out that after the pizza,
it was time for a PowerPoint presentation about the history of Imsil cheese
What's actually pretty interesting about Imsil is that cheese is not
traditionally a part of Korean cuisine,
and by everything I've read, was actually introduced into Korea via Imsil
in the 60s
The story goes that in the 1950s,
there was a Belgian missionary
who settled in the Imsil area,
who raised goats and made his own cheese
The local governor thought it might be a good idea
for the whole community to learn the craft,
so he asked the missionary to teach the town his cheese making skills
and from there Imsil became the cheese mecca of Korea and the main domestic producer of the stuff
So after the presentation,
it was time to move on to the actual cheese making
First up, was a sort of chemistry based class
Where they gave us a jar of warm milk and a couple of enzymes to add in to, like, curdle it
After we had created our beginners cheese-in-a-jar,
we shredded it, strained it, and then
mashed it together into a blob
And after slicing, we put our cheese onto crackers so we could have our first tasting of the day
And it was pretty good
Not a sharp cheese, but rather a soft and light and slightly wet cheese
But regardless,
I think we were all happy to be accomplishing our
primary objective of the day:
Eating stuff.
Very quickly up next, we were ready to move on to cheese number two,
which was a premade cheese that we were going to stretch.
So to start off, we were presented with a
large mixing bowl full of cheese to shred.
Once we had ripped up our cheese, it was time to melt it down.
So we mashed our bits together and made a big blob to stretch out into sort of a cheese parachute,
which didn't go very well.
After that we were supposed to squeeze our cheese into a long tube,
kind of like giant flaccid string cheese, and though our dairy snake was kind of falling apart,
the cheese instructor who was helping us just started feeding us
handfuls of the stuff, which was exactly the "Bring Me the Cheese Moment"
I was waiting for. Both [cheese] with the slightly sharper taste and also with the warmth and melty-ness.
After taking some lactose to the face, we packaged our string cheese to take home...
...with the Imsil dude's seal of approval right on top. We also grabbed our pizzas that had been baking the entire time,
and once we had our haul, we were ready to head back outside and have ourselves a little picnic.
Okay,
so that was like a day and a half of, like, cheese and pizza making classes
-Speed cheese making.
-I mean it wasn't experience. They- they totally didn't do what they promised.
-I don't know if it was audible at all, but Saf described it as like a
"Soul Cycle Class for Cheese Making."
-Yes! [Wait]...
"THIS IS HOW YOU MAKE PIZZA!
THIS IS HOW YOU DO IT!
But regardless of the format of the class, they did deliver on the cheese front.
-They promised us cheese. We got cheese
 
-Yes.
-At multiple points. So that was good.
-Well, I think Claire was filming at one point, and they just put cheese in her mouth, so...
-But despite our multiple cheese appetizers, we were definitely ready for the entrees. -(Laughs) Yeah.
Oh, it's so cute, and perfect! I love it! Oh my god, it's adorable!
Oh my god
I do not think it looked this good when it went in.  -It didn't.
-And then we opened up Sara's pizza, which was also looking pretty tasty.
 
 
I found this task quite difficult on account of the blustery day.
-I just feel like this is just as fashionable as I can get, really. -Yeah.
-But then it was time to taste test our creations. -Cheers. -Cheese.
-I'm not sure what that was though.
-It's like one of those ads where someone like takes up bite of something, and the wind like just bursts into their face.
Like this is the best pizza ever. -Okay, it's quite good actually. -Uh, no really?
-This is really good. -I'll eat the other half
-This is awesome. -We did a great job. -We did an excellent job.
-But before we just inhaled the pizzas... -Can I come in there for a piece of Pizza? -Yeah. -...we gave Tyler some as well.
 
-Potatoes!
-And I think he liked it too... -Oh yeah. -Yeah? Oh that's amazing! -It's quite good
-It's worth a 14-hour flight. -...or at least you know, it was worth the additional 4 hour train ride from Seoul.
All right. So now that we have eaten some of our pizza,
-Sounds good to me.
-Yeah, you just want to finish. -I'm gonna keep eating as we explore.
-So we set off around the park's circular paths to investigate all of the different buildings and attractions.
-What is going on up there? Is that like sound of music or something?
-There's a lot of sound of music stuff going on. -So I feel like it's possible. -Yeah. -It's cute though. -It's very cute.
-But instead of going up the hill, we decided to start with the right side of the park.
Alright, let's go through this way.
There were actually two cheese hearts one that was sort of holy it is good
It is cute and one that was served on a very large plate with utensils to match cue montage of me
Attempting to make cheese heart puns. My heart would be
Blue cheese without you know, I don't like blue cheese you are
Gouda to me. This went on for a while quick Sara
Give me a type of cheese if you leave me I come in there. Oh
That was really good. How did you think of that? Has it been pre-loaded this whole time?
Oh, okay good. You could have just lied.
There you go. Okay. Hey and with the heart that works well, okay cool. You'll even give me a high five on that one
Yeah, I gave you a one four seven. Yeah
Directly across from the plated cheese heart was another building. So there's a random laser tag just over there but not cheese themed
It's an interesting addendum to the cheese theme-park. They're like we have giant heart cheeses and then we have laser tag
brings a new meaning to
Dangerously cheesy. Oh my god. Please walk off screen. You can leave too Sarah. That's
Why are you here?
Though we didn't have quite enough of a quorum for a good laser tag match. We did go in and check it out
Okay, this is like the laser tag course and Sarah was right that it wasn't really cheesy laser tag
If anything I'd say, it's more like Wild West theme it's kind of cool
But it did give us a good view of the marquee wheel of cheese across the park. I like you
I like the giant wheel of cheese. Just looming. It's like he's trying to eat the sound of music kids over there
He did look like a giant like pac-man pac-man
Yeah
So after that
we
Continued up the path to a large clock tower that had fake Swiss Guards standing outside of it a la the vatican
He looks a lot like John Cena, doesn't he? Oh, I see it
I'm picking up what you're putting down. Inside of the clock tower
They had a trick eye museum or like forced perspective vignettes for people to take pictures with
including a cheese up scenario
Honestly no
But I like the idea. I don't know why there's a goat there. I couldn't really figure this one out
Besides that one there was like a painting come to life. Scenario Oh see that one looks quite good
I
Don't think that's Monet a Ferrari zipping through the countryside scene. Look at you, what are you sponsored by? Seat Geek?
And a Venetian gondola sticking out of the wall. I would recommend more cheese in here
We the flying cheese up display, but I feel like the Ferrari could at least be made out of cheese
Okay, you validated it all
Behind the trick eye museum there was a pretty quiet
Courtyard that had a few little cafes, a large empty stage, a small hotel in
Case you want to spend the night on the premises, and a cheese
Aging building that was kind of like a chilled stone room with a bit of a wine cellar vibe. It was kind of romantic
This room did actually feature a wine and cheese tasting area
These are the adult cheese making rooms
That was more like what I had expected the whole park to be like originally like gourmet
Snacking while wheels of cheese aged in the background. All right, we've got a little bit of adult cheese
We could have had it with wine, but it is sort of opening use drop it
I literally just oh I drop the cheese into my Birkin stocking. Yes
Sarah was stone-cold sober when she dropped the cheese into my shoe. We did eventually get to taste the cheese though. Hmm
That's what a sharp cheese and it was quite delicious. That's a good cheese. It would go well with wine, it's true
After the adult area, we followed the path back towards the center of the park
but instead of turning down to the cheese palace, which by the way
I think is mostly a food court. We turned uphill to the sound of music tableau where we found some large alpine horns
And a stationary rickshaw, do you saw cycle
We did eventually reach the top of the hill where we encountered a slightly
16 going on 17 style gazebo and then of course you have gradually and Ruth and all the kids
Well actually only a few of the kids
I guess the Von Trapps are not really cheese related, but they are sort of Swiss adjacent
So maybe that's why they're so prominently featured. I think we have two things
So from there we continued onwards to the much-anticipated
Cheese slide here. This actually does make it more of a theme park. Yeah, they do have like a sort of roller coaster?
Yeah
No he's not. And after scaring away the rest of the line I hopped on the slide. Alright. See you later
Oh
Why is it so loud?
It's actually quite a lengthy ride and it's made up of a bunch of small metal rollers that
Clink around and do a number on your booty. Oh my god
You're not going very fast
My butt's getting massaged like crazy!
That sounds nice. How was it?
Nah, he's way far he's way far. Oh my god, how's your butt Oh like shiatsu massage?
That didn't stop Tyler from trying his hand, or rather, his behind at the slide as well.
Is he going faster than me or slower? I think I was going faster. Maybe I'm wrong though
Oh
But but still shaken right and to complete the tripod Sarah who had been exploring
Elsewhere for a moment rejoined us at the slide and plopped right on then
This is what happens when she's goes to your large intestines. Oh my god
I don't think that when Sarah dressed to match the cheese, she expected digestion imagery to come out of it
I was trying to get the speed and it didn't work. How's your butt feeling?
Hot wedgie though. We all did enjoy the slide
I think that it could have benefitted from having like a tray to sit on rather than just having legs straight onto rollers
But it was definitely a good addition to the park. There's a ride
It's a theme park if there's a ride with a theme it is a theme park was this
People kept smacking their heads on I think cuz they put this on it
Yeah behind the slide there were a few pastures with goats in them. What's up? Hey, buddy. This guy's coming down
He wants to hang out. I think that's a woman
-Hello, ma'am. -Whose udders seemed pretty full and ready
For more cheese making.
Three squeezes and I will drain you
Okay bite Dwight. So with the back side of the park investigated and our backsides raw, it was finally time to visit the
Marquee cheese shaped building. Oh, there it is. We are approaching the big Cheese
It's kind of like the great pumpkin from Charlie Brown. I feel like it's been calling us this whole time
It's like Mount Doom. Now once you get inside the wheel of cheese, there are two different floors
The lower floor is indoors and has a couple of interactive walls
What about the cheese cycle featuring what looks like Daisy from Mario?
Which is a map of the world with famous cheeses like linked to their countries
This was very offensive to Sarah I'm just gonna add it in with like pen
You're gonna vandalize the cheese theme park, but don't worry. We would never harm the cheese park
So after inspecting that floor, we went to check out upstairs
Oh, wow. Look at the view.
Which ended up being like a lookout deck from which you could see the entire park
giant cheese
Checkpoint. Hey, no, it's again. It's like a watchtower
It was actually quite nice up here because not only did we get to hang out in the cheese
I mean the cheese I am one with the cheese
But we also got to get a bird's-eye view of all of the different buildings
we had visited far over there is the trick eye museum and then further it be like
Maturing cheese room that was like one of the experience rooms and then there's the cheese palace cheese palace. And then that is I
Guess Imsil proper. So that's what's in this giant pac-man after our trip up the watchtower
It was almost closing time for the cheese park. All right, I think everything's closing up right about now
Yeah, I think it's time for us to head back to the station and catch our train back our four-hour train back hat
I hope I have eaten enough cheese to sustain me through that four hour trip. Yeah, and though we hadn't seen every single thing
What is that building that I don't think we'll ever know
We had actually hit most of it including the gift shop on the way out you got ice cream and a Gatorade, okay
It's fine. I just I didn't know where you were. Sorry, I, ... I almost made us miss the train
Tran huh. And with that we bid the Imsil cheese theme park alveta saying goodnight and headed back to the train station. Whoa
the wind
In my hair, I feel so alive. All right. We are you can see my receding hairline. Mine too be honest
All right, so we are done at the cheese theme park and we are heading back to Seoul now on the train. Do we have cheese for the train?
Too much cheese coma and because it was a Sunday and apparently many people
Vacation for the weekend in the countryside the train going back into Seoul was packed
So none of us got to sit together, but eventually four hours later. Our stop was called
It was great
for like two hours
So we exited the Train all a bit groggy and shockingly hungry. So we stopped at a cafe nearby for a late dinner
Where Sara thought it would be fun to employ our intial cheese straight into the dish man
Oh, it's melting in and though it was perhaps a bold move for our intestines to add even more cheese into our systems. I
Thought the dish was pretty tasty and Sara agreed
And with that, I think it was finally time for us to head back to our hotel and call it a day
All right, so cheesy
Okay, so that was our trip to Imsil South Korea
I think the cheese park definitely exceeded my expectations in a couple of areas. Though It wasn't quite Six Flags
There were a fair amount of different attractions and the grounds were pretty expansive
I also didn't know that much about the history of the Imsil area
And I think it's actually quite cool that cheese is like so much their thing
Who says that that's actually what they say an Imsil yeah that's Imsil's town motto
Now that said, it's definitely far and once again, it's mostly geared towards children
There is like that one back area. That seems to be more for parents
But the rest of the park is more like a playground regardless
I had a lot of fun at the cheese park and though we did get to taste a fair amount of cheese
Which I was excited about
I think my favorite part was actually the scenery not only was it cool to see a lot of the Korean countryside
From the Train the cheese park itself is actually really pretty with some seriously tranquil pastoral views
I'm not sure if we will be returning to the cheese park mostly because we live a 14-hour plane ride away
but if you live nearby
It's definitely a fun place to check out I will warn you in advance though
If you're gonna ride the slide bring some full-length pants my colons still rattling
Thank you guys so much for watching
And once again a big THANK YOU to Sara for helping us get to the cheese theme park if you liked that video
Make sure to smash that like button and if you want to see more videos like this
Make sure to shamash that subscribe button here are my social media handles and a big shout-out to Sophie for watching
Thanks for watching Sophie and I will see you guys next time
