Sinheungsa

Where it sits. Sinheungsa occupies the mouth of the Cheonbuldong valley in Outer Seorak, inside Seoraksan National Park and within the administrative boundary of Sokcho, ten kilometres from the East Sea. It is the head temple of the third parish of the Jogye Order and, for most visitors, the first thing encountered after the Sogongwon park entrance, because the main trails to Ulsanbawi and to Biseondae both begin by passing its walls. The setting does much of the work: granite spires rise on three sides, the stream runs through boulders the size of cars below the temple bridge, and the ridgelines are bare rock where the soil has never held.

A temple that keeps moving. Foundation is traditionally dated to 653 and attributed to the Silla monk Jajang, under the name Hyangseongsa. Fire destroyed it in the late seventh century, and the community rebuilt on a different site, then rebuilt again. The present location and the name Sinheungsa — roughly, the temple that has risen anew — date from 1644, when monks re-established it here after another destruction. Some accounts advance the claim that it is the oldest continuously functioning Seon (Zen) temple anywhere; what is beyond argument is that its fabric has been renewed repeatedly, and that the site itself has been a place of practice for well over a thousand years.

The bronze Buddha at the gate. The temple's most conspicuous feature is modern. The Great Unification Buddha, a seated bronze figure of about 14.6 metres cast from roughly a hundred tonnes of metal, was completed in 1997 after a decade of fundraising and work, and dedicated to the hope of Korean reunification. It sits in the open on a granite platform facing the valley, with a small underground shrine beneath the pedestal. Purists find it out of scale with the wooden halls behind it; nobody misses it. Beyond the statue, the temple proper keeps a modest, tightly packed courtyard with a Geungnakbojeon main hall, a bell pavilion, and a seven-treasure pagoda that holds relics.

The mountain around it. Seoraksan is the third-highest massif in South Korea, topping out at Daecheongbong at 1,708 metres, and it is the reason most people come. From the temple, the trail to Ulsanbawi climbs about 3.8 kilometres to a rampart of six granite domes, the final stretch on several hundred steel steps bolted to the rock, and finishes on a platform with the whole coast laid out below. The other classic route follows the stream to Biseondae and the cave hermitage of Geumganggul. For those unwilling to climb, a cable car has run since 1971 from the park entrance to the ruined fortress of Gwongeumseong, a short ride to a rock terrace with a wide view. The park's autumn colour arrives before anywhere else in the country, usually in the second week of October, and the resulting fortnight is the single busiest period on any Korean mountain. Seoraksan has carried protected status since well before the tourism arrived: the massif was designated a natural monument, became a national park in 1970, and was accepted as a UNESCO biosphere reserve in 1982, which is why the valley floor around the temple has hotels and the slopes above it have almost nothing.

On screen, from the temple to the coast. Seoraksan supplies the landscape shorthand for Korean cinema and television whenever a scene needs mountains, and the park's rock scenery appears in countless establishing shots. The screen tourism that actually shapes visitor numbers here, though, belongs to Sokcho below. KBS filmed Autumn in My Heart in the city in 2000, the drama that launched the director Yoon Seok-ho's seasonal cycle and much of the early Korean Wave, and its locations remain a fixed circuit: the Abai Village settled after the Korean War by refugees from the northern province of Hamgyong, and the hand-pulled ferry, the galetbae, that still crosses the narrow channel there on a cable. The village's northern-style sundae sausage and squid dishes have outlasted the drama's ratings.

Getting there and timing. Sokcho is reached by express bus from Seoul in around two and a half hours; local buses run from the city terminal to the Seoraksan park entrance in about half an hour, and the temple is a ten-minute walk from the bus stop. A national park entrance fee applies, but temple admission has been free since the state assumed the cost of cultural-heritage fees in May 2023. October weekends are extraordinarily crowded, with queues for the cable car forming before opening; May, June and September give the same mountain with a fraction of the people. The temple courtyard and the statue platform are reached on paved paths with some steps, while everything above Biseondae involves sustained climbing on rock and stairs.