Naejangsan became a national park in 1971 and covers 81.7 km² around Jeongeup in North Jeolla. By Korean standards it is small and it is not especially high — Sinseonbong tops out at 763m. What it has is a shape.
The valley is a closed bowl ringed by peaks, which traps warmth and shelters everything inside from wind. That combination lets a very dense stand of maple grow right down the valley floor, and it holds the leaves longer and turns them harder than an exposed hillside would. The result has been famous since the Joseon dynasty, when the mountain was named among the country’s eight great scenes.
The species doing most of the work is the Korean maple, along with the danpung maples planted along the entrance avenue over the last century. The avenue is the photograph the whole country recognises: a few hundred metres of trees meeting overhead, going crimson from the top down.
At the head of the valley is Naejangsa, founded in 636 under the Baekje king Mu. It has burned down four times. The main hall went in the Korean War and was rebuilt in 1958, burned again in 2012 through an electrical fault, and was destroyed a fourth time in March 2021 in an arson attack by a monk who was later arrested.
That last rebuild finished recently: the new main hall was consecrated in April 2026, paid for entirely by the temple, and this time treated against fire. So the hall you will see is brand new — which is oddly in keeping with a building that has been renewed roughly every other generation since the seventh century.
Baegyangsa, over the ridge on the southern side of the park, was founded in 632 and is the other great temple here — every bit as good in November, with rather fewer people in front of it.
