Seoraksan: Korea's Granite Peaks설악산: 화강암 봉우리의 미학

If you have seen a Korean landscape painting — mist drifting between sharp gray spires — you have essentially seen Seoraksan. Rising near the east coast city of Sokcho, the massif tops out at Daecheongbong Peak, 1,708 meters, and its skyline of jagged rock towers makes it the country's most dramatic mountain scenery. The drama is geological. Seoraksan is carved largely from granite and gneiss: molten rock that hardened deep underground, was slowly pushed upward, and then had its softer covering stripped away by tens of millions of years of erosion. What remains are the resistant granite cores — knife ridges, domes, and monoliths like Ulsanbawi, a wall of rock so striking it has its own legends. This is why so many famous Korean mountains are rocky "bone mountains" rather than soft forested ones. Koreans recognized its value early: Seoraksan was designated a national park in 1970, and in 1982 it became Korea's first UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. It is also where autumn officially begins — the country's first fall foliage reports start on its high slopes each late September before the color wave rolls south. Between the cable car, valley walks, and serious ridge hikes, it suits everyone from strollers to alpinists.