Juwangsan

Juwangsan National Park was declared on 30 March 1976 as the twelfth national park in South Korea, in the counties of Cheongsong and Yeongdeok, in North Gyeongsang province, within the Taebaek range. The mountain had been recognised as a tourist attraction on 30 May 1972, four years before the declaration.

Its summit barely exceeds 720 metres, but the park stands out for its morphology: deep valleys and numerous vertical rock walls that make it the third rockiest mountain in the country. During the Silla dynasty it was known as Seokbyeongsan, "stone wall mountain", for the rock spires that rise out of the forest, and it took its present name in the Unified Silla period. Alongside those formations, the park includes four waterfalls, caves and the temple of Daejeonsa, and its paths run along the valley floors to the falls, which makes the visit accessible without steep climbs.

Nearby lies the Jusanji pond, a small reservoir built in the eighteenth century out of which rise the trunks of dead willows, whose reflection in the still water, especially in the autumn dawn mist, has become one of the most reproduced images of Korea. The park has been surveyed with 88 plant species and 924 animal species, and the area forms part of the Cheongsong UNESCO Global Geopark.