Cheorwon Hantangang River Geopark

Character

Cheorwon's Hantangang records its landscape in reverse. Basaltic lava flowed into an older river valley hundreds of thousands of years ago, filling low ground and building the broad Cheorwon Lava Plateau. The river later cut down through that basalt, opening the gorge that exposes the lava layers today

Goseokjeong makes the sequence visible in one place. A roughly 110-million-year-old granite rock rises inside a gorge shaped by much younger basalt flows dated to about 540,000–120,000 years ago. At Jiktang Falls, the same volcanic surface behaves differently: the river drops only about three meters but spreads across roughly 80 meters of flat basalt

The experience

The geopark is distributed along the river, so no single stop represents the whole landscape. Goseokjeong is the clearest orientation point, while Jiktang Falls shows the breadth of the lava surface and Songdaeso exposes stacked basalt along cliffs rising roughly 30–40 meters above the water. Each site reveals a different part of the same geological sequence

The 3.6-kilometer Columnar Jointing Trail changes the viewing angle. Its metal walkway runs along cliff faces about 20–30 meters above the river, putting visitors beside columnar joints and boundaries between rock types that are difficult to read from the valley rim. The open-grid deck and suspended sections also keep the vertical drop physically present underfoot rather than turning the gorge into a distant panorama

The trail has two gates, Sundam and Druni. Korea Tourism Organization guidance notes that the Druni start gives an easier early descent, while the opposite direction meets more uphill stairs. That difference is practical rather than interpretive: the geology remains the subject, but the gate changes how much climbing arrives first

History

The oldest visible layer at Goseokjeong is Cretaceous granite formed underground about 110 million years ago. Much later, repeated Late Quaternary fissure eruptions sent basaltic lava along the old Hantangang channel. UNESCO describes lava following the paleo-channel for more than 110 kilometers and creating a broad volcanic plateau

Once the lava cooled, renewed river erosion cut a new channel into the plateau. That process produced the deep basalt gorges, columnar-jointed cliffs and waterfalls that distinguish the Hantangang from nearby V-shaped valleys cut into granite and metamorphic rock. Human settlement later used the river and fertile plains, while the border region's military history limited development across much of the twentieth century

Hantangang became a UNESCO Global Geopark in 2020. Cheorwon then opened the Columnar Jointing Trail on November 19, 2021, converting a formerly difficult cliff edge into public geotourism infrastructure. By March 2026, Cheorwon County reported more than three million cumulative visitors to the trail and 10.9 billion won in entrance-fee value returned to visitors as local gift certificates

Before you go

Choose the part of the geopark before setting a navigation point. Goseokjeong works well for the geology around the older granite outcrop and as a general Cheorwon tourism base; the paid Columnar Jointing Trail is a separate 3.6-kilometer point-to-point walk with its own gates, hours and admission

For the trail, decide whether you want Sundam or Druni as the starting gate and plan the return as well as the walk. Weekend and holiday guidance lists a free shuttle between the two gates; on weekdays, do not assume the same return service. Heavy-rain advisories can close the trail for safety