Mountain park · North Gyeongsang
주왕산국립공원
Rock gorges, waterfalls and the reflecting pond at Jusanji.
Juwangsan is modest in height at 721m but dramatic in shape — the walk up the main valley threads between rock walls past a series of waterfalls, on a path that needs no real climbing.
Jusanji, a small reservoir built in 1720 with willows standing in the water, sits a short drive away and is the image most people know the park by.
Door-to-door estimates for a normal day; they stretch on a holiday weekend. Check the timetable before you rely on a last bus back.
Bus
Express coach from Seoul Dong Seoul to Cheongsong, about 4h, then a short local bus or taxi to the park gate.
Train
No useful line — this is one of the harder parks to reach without a car.
Car
About three and a half hours. Strongly recommended here, because Jusanji is a separate drive from the main valley and there is no bus between them.
Otters in the stream through the gorge, plus wild boar and roe deer in the surrounding hills. The rock walls hold nesting raptors.
Juwangsan is the only place in the world where the Korean nutmeg-yew subspecies Taxus cuspidata var. nana grows wild in numbers, and it is also known for wild rhododendron on the cliffs. The valley floor turns in late October.
Korea’s wildlife is shy and mostly nocturnal — you’re far more likely to see tracks than animals. Wild boar are the one to know about: keep your distance, don’t run, and never get between a sow and her young.
What grows and lives here
Juwangsan is a small park with an outsized reputation, built on volcanic rock weathered into spires, cliffs and narrow gorges. It sits inside the Cheongsong UNESCO Global Geopark, and its best-known sight is not a peak at all but a three-hundred-year-old reservoir with trees standing in it.
Jusanji — willows standing in the water
Cheongsong, beside Juwangsan
Photo by Jusanji, CC BY-SA 3.0
One of the rock spires
Juwangsan
Photo by 최옥석, CC BY-SA 3.0
Rock above the treeline
Juwangsan
Photo by 최옥석, CC BY-SA 3.0
The valley below the crags
Juwangsan
Photo by 최옥석, CC BY-SA 4.0
Jusanji is inside the park boundary but it is not on the waterfall trail and you cannot walk to it from Daejeonsa in an afternoon. It is a drive or a bus ride round to its own car park. Go at dawn if you can — the reason people photograph it is the mist sitting on the water before the wind picks up, and by mid-morning it is an ordinary pond with a car park.
Walking it
Juwangsan has the gentlest headline walk of any Korean national park: a nearly flat path up a gorge past three waterfalls, suitable for absolutely anyone. The mountain behind it is a different proposition.
Flat, and the reason to come
Route: Daejeonsa → Jeil pokpo → Jeie pokpo → Jesam pokpo
Getting to the start: Intercity bus to Cheongsong, then a local bus to the Juwangsan entrance.
The path runs up a narrowing gorge between rock walls to a chain of three waterfalls, and it is almost level the whole way. Pushchairs manage it. The gorge narrows to a slot before the first fall, which is the best bit.
The real climb
Route: Daejeonsa → Juwangsan (721m) → Hurimgyo → back down the gorge
Getting to the start: Same start as the gorge walk.
Climbs out of the valley to the ridge, along it, and drops back into the gorge lower down — so you get the summit and the waterfalls in one loop. Steep and rocky at the top.
Ten minutes' walking, total
Route: Jusanji car park → the reservoir path
Getting to the start: By road from Cheongsong; it has its own entrance, away from Daejeonsa.
A short level path along the water. That is all it is, and it is still one of the most photographed places in the country.
Given by walking time; the valley route is signed from Daejeonsa.
A pond older than most countries' parks
Jusanji was dug in 1721 as an irrigation reservoir for the farms below — it is about 200m long, 100m wide and 8m deep, and in three hundred years it has never run dry. What makes it extraordinary is the roughly thirty willows growing directly out of the water, some of them two or three centuries old, their trunks submerged and their crowns above the surface.
It is at its best in the ten minutes after sunrise in late October, when mist sits on the water and the reflections hold. Korean film-goers know it from Kim Ki-duk's <em>Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring</em>, which was shot here.
The mountain proper takes its name from a legend: a Chinese prince called Juwang is said to have hidden in these gorges after a failed rebellion. Daejeonsa, the temple at the entrance, is traditionally dated to 672 and attributed to the monk Uisang.
The whole area is volcanic — welded tuff, eroded into the spires and slot gorges that make the valley walk so unusual — and it now sits inside the Cheongsong UNESCO Global Geopark.
Mudeungsan
Gwangju's mountain, with columns of volcanic rock along the ridge.
Naejangsan
The country's most photographed autumn maples, in early November.
Odaesan
A thousand-metre fir forest and two of Korea's most important temples.