Jirisan Ssanggyesa & Hwagae

Character

Tea bushes climb the lower slopes around Hwagae before the road reaches Ssanggyesa. The geography is unusually compact: one valley holds a major Buddhist temple, the landscape associated with Korea's oldest tea-growing tradition, and a market that still sells the crop at the mountain's foot

Hadong's tea fields developed on steep ground around the southern side of Jirisan, where small plots resisted the large, mechanized plantation pattern seen elsewhere. Tea and temple share a long history here. Cultivation around Jirisan is recorded from 828, and Buddhist monks at Ssanggyesa became part of the region's tea tradition

The experience

Hwagae unfolds as a chain of separate stops along one valley. Near the Seomjingang, Hwagae Market gathers local tea, mountain vegetables and other Hadong produce. Farther toward Jirisan, tea fields appear on the slopes and the Hadong Tea Museum gives the agricultural story a useful introduction before the road reaches Ssanggyesa

At the temple, the valley tightens into forest. Stone monuments and reconstructed Joseon-era halls occupy a site first founded in the Silla period. The change from market streets to cultivated slopes to temple woods happens over a short distance, which is what makes the area feel coherent even though its attractions are separate

History

Ssanggyesa was founded in 722 and originally called Okcheonsa. It received its present name in 887. The temple was later destroyed during the Imjin War, and the buildings standing today largely date from rebuilding completed in 1632. Historic stone monuments preserve earlier layers of the site despite those losses

Tea adds a parallel chronology. Korean historical accounts record tea seeds being brought from Tang China and planted around Jirisan in 828. Cultivation endured in the Hwagae area, where steep terrain encouraged small plots and hand work. Tea from Hadong entered royal and Buddhist use, and the region remains one of Korea's best-known traditional tea centers

Tea is still farmed, processed, sold and taught in the valley. Local specialists maintain hand-production traditions, while the market and tea-culture facilities keep the crop visible beyond the fields themselves

Before you go

Treat Hwagae and Ssanggyesa as a linked valley outing, with the market and tea area lower down and the temple farther into Jirisan. Ssanggyesa's public visiting hours apply to the temple, not to the whole Hwagae district. Spring cherry blossom season is famous here, while the tea landscape gives the area a strong identity well beyond the brief flowering period