Ungok Wetland

Character

In the early 1980s, construction of Ungok Reservoir relocated residents of nine nearby villages. Terraced rice fields around the basin were abandoned; over the next three decades, with little human intervention, they developed into the wetland now protected as Ungok

The protected landscape covers roughly 1.93 square kilometres of low mountain terrain. Gochang’s current inventory lists about 850 plant and animal species, including protected otters, leopard cats and martens, across wetland, forest and reservoir habitats

The site is divided into three visitor areas. Obeygol contains the core naturally restored wetland; the ecological park provides a more managed entry landscape; Ungok Reservoir forms a broader water edge beyond it. Those zones preserve the history of the place in physical form: former farmland, later reservoir infrastructure and recovering habitat remain side by side

The experience

Obeygol is the closest view of the restored wetland. Access from the dolmen side leads into a boardwalk system through the protected core, and this section is designated for walking only

The ecological park and reservoir have a different scale. They can be explored on foot, while an electric exploration train follows a 3.3-kilometre course between the main visitor points. The train is useful for reaching the reservoir zone, but it does not replace the boardwalk sections inside the natural-restoration area

Four official walking courses range from 3.6 kilometres to about 10 kilometres. The shortest concentrates on the core wetland; the longer routes connect forest, reservoir, ecological park and the Gochang Dolmen area. A visit can therefore range from a compact wetland walk to several hours across the wider protected landscape

The wetland grew over land that had been worked as stepped rice fields, so the present vegetation occupies a terrain whose human-made structure predates the restoration

History

The basin was cultivated before the modern reservoir existed. Residents had converted wet ground into terraced paddies and farmed the slopes around the valley

That pattern changed in the early 1980s when Ungok Reservoir was created to provide cooling water. Gochang records the relocation of residents from nine nearby villages. Farming stopped across much of the basin, and fields remained uncultivated for more than three decades

The ecological change was gradual rather than engineered as a conventional restoration project. Water conditions, vegetation succession and reduced human disturbance allowed wetland habitat to re-form across the abandoned paddies. By 2011, the area had recovered enough ecological value to receive national wetland-protection status and Ramsar designation

Later recognition widened the conservation context. Ungok became part of Gochang’s ecotourism system, and the county was designated a Ramsar Wetland City in 2022. In 2023 the wider Jeonbuk West Coast UNESCO Global Geopark also incorporated the area among its principal sites

Before you go

Ungok is a network of routes rather than one continuous loop. The Obeygol core, ecological park and reservoir have different starting points and movement rules, while the four official courses vary from a short wetland circuit to roughly 10 kilometres across the wider landscape