Why go to Hahoe Folk Village
It’s in a lovely setting, it’s pretty and I appreciated the history of seeing rural life in South Korea as it was many years ago.
There is also at least one unexpectedly nice restaurant in the tourist area near the ticket office.
Why go to Ocheon Historic Site
We stayed there (accommodation found by a very helpful lady at the Confucian Academy up the road) and it was lovely to stay in a small living museum.
Historic houses without the tourists in a lovely setting (though I say “without the tourists” as by virtue of staying there and being the only guests, we wandered around the hamlet quite early in the morning).
Why go to Andong Dosan Seowon Confucian Academy
There were tourists there but not many.
The setting is lovely, the buildings are interesting and it was actually one of my favourite places. Though, in part at least, that was because it was early morning, hadn’t been open long, the weather was nice and it all looked lovely and had a very calming effect on me.
Is it worth going out of your way to visit these places near Andong?
Although we’d read and heard that Andong is a pleasant town, we drove through it at rush hour and it was chaotic and I didn’t want to stop there. I saw down the covered market from our car in traffic and it looked lively and interesting, but I don’t feel we missed out by not stopping at or staying in Andong. But that is only an opinion based on seeing the town from a car, in traffic, in the early evening, when we were a little twitchy about where we were going to stay that night.
There is a lot to see around that area if the guide books can be believed and I think Hahoe and the Academy are well worth seeing, though Ocheon is too small to warrant a big detour to see.
The road up towards Dosan Seowon Confucian Academy is pretty as it is largely up into the mountains and, after a few miles, there are lakes on your right, after which is Ocheon Historic Site and, maybe three miles after, the Academy. For me, the Academy is well worth detouring to see. But if you read this and think, “Yes, I must go to the Academy, it sounds lovely”, don’t expect a full day’s entertainment. I think we were there about an hour, in part because we spent so long looking across the water to the building reflected in the still waters below. It is small and maybe there are other Confucian academies that are more interesting or better. But I really liked this place, I felt really calm and at peace. Believe it or not, I would make the effort to go there again if I were in South Korea. But it really isn’t exciting.
As for Hahoe Folk Village, we were both a bit disappointed that there were as many signs of modern living as there were, eg aerials and gas cylinders. We’d been led to believe it was a living and working museum where people farmed and lived as they did hundreds of years ago. That said, it is in a pretty setting with farmland, a river, mountains and trees.
There were some restaurants around the ticket booth area where you can get the free bus to the main entrance to the large folk village complex about a mile away along an uninspiring path. We expected the food to be poor, along the lines of a grubby fast food place. We ordered bibimbap and a pancake, both of which we shared. The food was fairly cheap (14,000 won for both of us, c£9) and tasty and the staff with their limited English were friendly and showed us how to eat some of the dishes that accompanied our order!
Ocheon Historic Site was a wonderful place to stay, but I reiterate that we were very lucky to be there on our own. We would never have known we could have stayed there had not a lady in the information booth at the Academy (which was closing by the time we arrived – we had been led to believe we would find somewhere to stay there, pffff) rung around to find us somewhere to stay, the first few places being ruled out on the grounds of being too expensive. She got us our room there for 50,000 won (C£32, so c£16 each). It’s free to wander around and there are only a few houses but the inhabitants are at least part of the original Kim family who lived there originally (I think that is correct, some rather approximate English from the man who helped us out there told us that). The buildings were old and it was good to see. The site is on the road up to the Academy so for a 15-minute stop, I would suggest going there. Or, better, I would recommend staying there (but bear in mind the accommodation is two large dorm rooms (ondol and yo) and they are single sex) but be alert if you’re not a fan of insects as we encountered a massive (I really am not exaggerating by the use of “massive”) spider, an exceptionally long millipede type insect and lots of other insects. And that was early spring!
Ocheon Historic Site 
Carpark outside Ocheon