Dalmagodo goes around. The trails go over
Dalmagodo is the famous one: a 17.74 km circuit that starts and finishes at Mihwangsa and stays below the ridge the whole way. Haenam publishes it in four named sections — 2.71 km in 50 minutes, 4.37 km in 1 hour 50, 5.63 km in 2 hours 10, and 5.03 km in 1 hour 40 — for six and a half hours in total. The four sections add to 17.74 km exactly.
It does not reach the summit. Not once.
The three routes on the cards above are the mountain proper: Songchon to Mihwangsa at 5.5 km, Mihwangsa to Mabong-ri at 9.2 km, and the full traverse joining them at 12.2 km. All three cross Dalmabong.
Haenam itself notes that Dalmagodo overlaps with other long-distance paths through here — the Nampparang-gil and the Ttangkkeut Millennium Forest Old Road among them — so if you are following signs rather than a map, check which route the sign belongs to.
The longer route is the faster one
Songchon to Mihwangsa is 5.5 km in three hours — 1.8 km an hour. Mihwangsa to Mabong-ri is 9.2 km in four — 2.3 km an hour. The longer route moves better, because it spends most of its length running along the ridge instead of climbing onto it.
That is why we grade the 9.2 km route below the 5.5 km one. Distance is not the thing here; the climb is.
Join them and you get the traverse: 12.2 km and seven hours by the trail map. Haenam’s web page says eight hours for what looks like the same line and names a different finishing point, so seven is the optimistic reading. Both ends are trailheads with no published bus, which is a bigger problem than the extra hour.
Seongmun-gul is the one place Haenam names
Haenam writes the warning directly into the route description: Seongmun-gul, rock section, danger point. That is the only such marking on the mountain.
It sits on the northern half of the ridge, past the summit coming from Mihwangsa. On the full traverse you reach it after four hours or more of walking, which is worth knowing when you plan the day.
Dosolam, further along, is marked as requiring you to step off the trail — there is a spring a hundred metres below it. Also a deliberate detour rather than something you meet by accident.
One summit, two names, three heights
You will see both Dalmabong and Bulsseonbong for the top of this mountain, and they are the same place. Haenam writes each in brackets after the other on different pages, and there is one beacon mound up there, listed as part of a national Historic Site. Two names, one peak.
The height is messier. Haenam’s current pages, its new trail map and Mihwangsa’s own site all say 489 m. An older county map says 499 m. The Forest Service database says 498.8 m.
The last two are close enough to look like a single older survey, though no official source says that. For planning, use 489 m — what the managing county currently publishes.
The same problem runs along the ridge: Dosolbong at the northern end has four different published heights, and the ridge length is given as both 12 km and 8 km. Treat any single number on this mountain as provisional except the route distances, which are consistent.
Listed as restricted, listed as open
Dalmasan appears by name in Haenam’s restricted-entry register — 318 hectares at Seojeong in Songji-myeon. Read no further and you would cancel the trip.
Read further and the same notice lists the Mihwangsa to Mabong-ri trail as open. The restriction covers the hillside, not the path across it. What the county does add is that open trails can still be closed when the fire alert level rises, so the listing is a default rather than a promise.
The seasons themselves: 20 January to 15 May in spring 2026, with a large-fire special period from 14 March to 19 April, and 20 October to 15 December in autumn 2025. Those dates are last year’s shape rather than this year’s fact, so check the current park notice before you go.
What is not published
Whether you pay to get in. Haenam publishes rates for thirteen sites and Mihwangsa is not one of them; the temple has no fee page. Several temples in Korea dropped their admission charges in 2023, so it would be easy to assume this is one. No charge is published either way, so carry some cash.
How to get there without a car. The published bus frequencies to Mihwangsa disagree with each other, and neither Songchon nor Mabong-ri has any published service at all. For the traverse in particular, sort the transport first.
There is also a new official forest path on Dalmasan, designated in June 2026, 0.5 km at Yeongjeon-ri in Bukpyeong-myeon. It is a separate designation from anything above and we have kept it out of the routes rather than guess how it connects.
How to take it
For the summit in half a day, walk Songchon to Mihwangsa: 5.5 km, three hours, finishing at the temple. It is the cleanest use of the mountain.
For the ridge, go Mihwangsa to Mabong-ri: 9.2 km, four hours, most of it along the white rock with the sea on both sides. Watch for Seongmun-gul on the second half.
For the whole thing, the traverse is 12.2 km and seven hours, and it needs two cars. And if what you actually want is the walk everyone talks about, that is Dalmagodo — a different route, around the base, and it never goes up.