Pokémon Secret Forest
A secret had appeared in the forest.
Seoul Forest is crowded on any weekend, but that day the crowd had all gathered to one side. The people who filled the park path drew into a single line the further in they went, and before long the walk itself had become a line waiting for something. At the end of that line was the entrance to the secret forest.
The line moved slowly, but the moment my turn came and I crossed through, the tiredness lifted from my steps on its own.
Thirty Years at the Gate
The first thing I met in the secret forest was a patch of red rising up out of the green. It was a huge sculpture, well over my own height, standing in the path and catching the eye the moment you walked in. It was the number thirty, packed thick with roses, and out of the Poké Ball at its end a Pikachu had climbed, both arms thrown wide and smiling. That was how the secret forest greeted me from the start, big and bright.
People started lining up in front of it the moment they came in. It was the same wait they had only just put up with outside, and yet this time everyone had a smile on their face. It was a line for a single photo beside a Pikachu that had turned thirty.
A Pikachu in Every Bed
When I turned my back on the red thirty, it was yellow's turn. I passed the entrance where the roses and tulips had burned red, took one step further in, and the whole forest was stirring with yellow. Between the trees, at the end of every flower bed, that familiar yellow body kept flickering into view. It was the face I had seen at the gate, except now there was more than one or two of them. Before I had even decided which way to go, my feet were already drawn toward the yellow, as if under a spell.
Pikachu filled the forest, each in a pose of its own. One had a paw laid against its red cheek and its head tilted to the side. Some were standing, some sitting, the same face doing something different every time. So while I was still smiling at one, another would be waiting right beside it.
Then, in front of one cabin, my steps stopped. A Pikachu had pushed its face into a round window. Its head filled the frame completely and its ears were pressed flat against the rim, and it stared out blankly, like a child who had been caught at something. In the planter beneath the window, yellow flowers were heaped full.
When I took a step back, the whole cabin came into view. Beside the one with its face in the window, a second sat in the front yard with both paws gathered against its cheeks. Small bulbs hung along the eaves, and a low fence ran around the flower bed. The two of them had settled into one small house, exactly like a family living there.
Further down the path, the flowers at my feet grew suddenly deeper in color. In the middle of all that tangled pink and white, a Pikachu had thrown both arms wide open. Its mouth was open in a grin, as if it meant to gather up everyone who came near. Where the flowers grew thickest, the brightest face had bloomed.
Even after I left the crowd of yellow behind, the color of it stayed in my eyes for a while.
The Cabin Where Gengar Lives
As I went deeper into the forest, the light softened by a degree. In the shade of the tall trees stood a log cabin, and a Gengar kept guard at its side. It was a purple thing about my own height, the corners of its mouth pulled all the way up to its ears. That mischievous grin suited the dim forest better than I would have thought. It had even left an empty place at its side for someone to stand in, quietly offering its company. And yet hardly anyone took the spot. Perhaps that grin, stretched ear to ear, was a little too much.
What drew my eye more was the house Gengar was said to live in. A small window was set into the log wall, green vines hung down from the eaves, and a pot of yellow flowers had been fixed beneath the window. Up at the edge of the roof, an Eevee and a Pachirisu perched side by side, looking down over the yard. For a house where a ghost was supposed to live, it was closer to a lived-in home, full of sunlight and flowers.
When I came around the house, a Jigglypuff was standing by a streetlamp. It had a pink body and round eyes, and purple wildflowers had bloomed in a cluster at its feet. Even sharing a yard with the darkness-wrapped Gengar, the pink of it did not dim in the least.
They lived under the same roof, and still each had a nature of its own. The frightening face and the round one, each keeping to its own place within the same shade.
Following Eevee's Path
Off to one side, a tunnel woven out of brush opened a path deep inward. Flowers and vines hung down overhead, and small bulbs strung among them let a yellow light spill through. Once I stepped inside, the sunlight came filtered through the leaves, and the green grew a shade deeper. I couldn't see the end of it all at once, which only made me more curious about what lay further in.
The first thing I came upon inside the tunnel was a Leafeon, the green of grass. Being the evolution with ears and a tail made of leaves, it blended with the brush behind it like one more growing plant. Half-buried in a cluster of white flowers, it sat there like a piece of treasure someone had hidden on purpose.
When I came out of the tunnel the light opened up, and Eevee's family lay scattered around. Eevee is a Pokémon that hasn't yet decided what it will become; depending on the surroundings it grows up in, it turns into fire, or into water. Those branches revealed themselves one by one along the path. First was an Umbreon, its black body ringed with yellow. True to a creature of darkness, it sat in the middle of the purple wildflowers with only its red eyes shining clear.
Beside it sat the Eevee in its original form. This was the point before any evolution, where all the branches begin. Buried in a bed of blue flowers, it had its big ears pricked up and was looking off at something. For a face that could become anything at all, the expression on it was perfectly at ease.
From that one untroubled face the branches spread out down the length of the path, into leaf and into darkness and into other forms I never got to meet. They had all set out from the same place, and yet each one had grown into a different light.
Beside the Sprawled Snorlax
In a corner where the shade of the trees had settled deep, a huge mass lay on the ground. It was a Snorlax. While all the others were standing, this one alone had sprawled on its side, its round belly turned up to the sky, not moving at all. It was big enough that people passing by slowed to look up at it. For a Pokémon whose whole work is sleeping and eating, lying spread out like this was the most natural thing in the world. The bulbs hung among the trees swayed above it, but nothing was going to wake the sleeping thing. I found myself wanting to climb up onto that broad belly and have a nap of my own.
When I turned my head to the right of the Snorlax, there stood yet another Pikachu. The same yellow, and yet the texture of it was entirely different. It had been stacked up one block at a time, so that the curves that should have been smooth broke apart into little steps. Round from far off, it became a coarse cluster of pixels up close. At its feet sat a Lego box and a small display case, quietly letting on what pieces this big Pikachu had been put together from.
A sleeping giant in one place, and a Pikachu built up out of blocks in the next. The secret forest had hidden something unexpected even in a corner like this. After that, I couldn't let myself pass a single turn in the path without a careful look.
Ending at the Store
Once I had made a full loop of the forest, the path gathered in front of the store. A long line had formed before the wooden shop with its triangular roof, and people were being drawn slowly inside. It was the place where the faces I had met in the forest could now be carried home in my hands, and so, at the very end of the walk, it was the busiest spot in the whole forest.
Coming out of the store, I was right at the exit. A Bewear stood in the way with both arms raised high, waving off each person on their way out. On a wooden sign beside it, the words Pokémon Secret Forest had been carved, marking the end of the woods. If it was the red thirty that had welcomed me on the way in, then on the way out it was this great bear's turn.
The crowd that day finally went past what the place could bear. So many people came that the gates closed earlier than planned, and I heard the police were even called out to break up a line that wouldn't disperse. As the years go by, rather than cooling off, the heat for it seems only to have grown. That a single old name could still draw this many people was, looking at it again, quite a thing to see.
For a brief while, the spring of Seoul Forest and the thirty years of Pokémon had been folded together into one place. The Pikachu that filled the flower beds, the Gengar at the log cabin, the sprawled-out Snorlax, all of it would be cleared away once the season passed. Even so, for that one season of spring, the forest I had always walked through had become a secret one. Anyone who went will never walk that path quite so absently again. Because they alone know that, beneath an ordinary stretch of path, a single season's secret once lay buried.
Reference
Open in Naver Map- Dates: May 1 to June 21, 2026
- Hours: 12:00 to 19:00
- Getting there: 5-min walk from Seoul Forest Station, Suin-Bundang Line
- Official site (opens in new tab)