Sorae Salt Pond

About

Sorae Salt Pond is a former salt pan located across Nonhyeon-dong in Namdong District, Incheon, and Bangsan-dong, Po-dong, Wolgot-dong, and Janggok-dong in Siheung, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea. Built as part of the fourth-phase salt pan construction initiated by the Governor-General of Chōsen, its construction spanned from 1935 to 1937. Following the liberation of Korea, it remained a major source of solar salt production under the South Korean government. However, facing a structural decline in the domestic salt industry and losing economic viability, the facility was permanently closed in July 1996. Like most traditional solar evaporation facilities, the Sorae Salt Pond produced salt by channeling seawater sequentially through a primary reservoir, two evaporation ponds, and a final crystallization pond. The workforce was organized into five distinct operational zones, each tasked with managing a specific section of the salt field. Over its decades of operation, the facility underwent several technical modernizations; the original mud floors of the crystallization ponds were gradually paved with tiles, and the method of moving harvested salt transitioned from manual shoulder-carrying to the use of handcarts. Today, portions of the site within Incheon and Siheung have been restored as a public ecological park. The remaining land is held by Sungdam, a private corpo

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.