Nine routes, two gates, three peaks
Everything starts either at Daeheungsa, the temple in the valley, or at Osojae spring on the pass to the east. The ridge above carries three named summits — Noseungbong, Garyeonbong at 703 m, and Duryunbong — and the routes are combinations of how you get onto that ridge and where you come off it.
We have put four of the nine on this page: the full traverse from the temple, the same ridge from Osojae, the short loop that stays below the peaks, and the quick crossing by Bukam. Between them they cover both gates, both grades of day, and the only route that returns to its own start. The other five are variations on the same ground.
The distances run from 3.95 km to 5.85 km and the times from two hours to four and a half. A short mountain with long days on it.
The county says it is not rough. Its own map disagrees
This needs stating plainly. Haenam’s tourism text describes Duryunsan as not rough and says you can be on Garyeonbong in two to three hours. Its trail map allows 4 hours 30 for the traverse to get there and back down, and the pace over that route works out at under 1.3 km an hour.
Haenam’s official material carries no hazard warning at all — no rock, no exposure, no scrambling, nothing about the ridge between Noseungbong and Garyeonbong. Take that as a gap in the record rather than a sign the ground is easy.
So we have gone with the numbers rather than the adjectives. Three of our four routes are graded at our hardest level, and the two ridge routes in particular are slow enough that the promotional line should not be your planning basis. If you have two to three hours, take the crossing by Bukam instead; it is the one route where that estimate actually holds.
The cable car goes somewhere else
There is a cable car at Duryunsan and it is easy to assume it shortens the walk. It does not. It climbs Gogyebong, a different summit from Garyeonbong, and its own page states there is no trail at the top station.
One provincial park route description does list Gogyebong as a waypoint, so the published statements do not line up. Either way, the cable car is a viewpoint trip, not an approach. Treat it as separate from the walking.
Its hours are published two ways as well: 09:00 to 18:00 on one page, 08:00 to 18:00 in summer and 17:00 in winter on another.
Three closure calendars, and only one of them matters here
Haenam runs three overlapping seasonal systems and it takes some care to see which one applies.
The national fire-risk season ran 20 January to 15 May in spring 2026, with a large-fire special period inside it from 14 March to 19 April. Autumn 2025 ran 20 October to 15 December. Then there is the county’s restricted-entry notice, 20 October 2025 to 15 May 2026 — but that one excludes provincial park land by design, and Duryunsan does not appear among its 398 listed parcels.
What does close this mountain is the third one. Because it is a provincial park, Haenam can shut sections under Article 28 of the Natural Parks Act, and in 2025 it did: notice 2025-37 closed 5.5 km of trail over 11.3 hectares from 1 April to 12 May.
That is a single recorded instance rather than a pattern, so there is nothing to say it happens every spring. What it does mean is that a spring trip here needs checking against a notice most people would not think to look for.
Free, which is worth knowing
Entry to Daeheungsa is free. Haenam states it in two separate official places.
What the county does not say is why. Temple admission charges across Korea changed in 2023, but nothing in Haenam’s text connects this one to that.
Parking is charged, somewhere between 2,000 and 5,000 won by vehicle class. Two county pages label those classes differently, so we are not printing a single number.
A World Heritage temple at the bottom
Daeheungsa was inscribed by UNESCO in 2018 as one of the Sansa, Buddhist Mountain Monasteries in Korea — a serial listing of seven temples that also includes Tongdosa and Seonamsa. Several of the nine routes begin at its main hall, and the hermitages scattered up the valley, Bukam and Jinbulam among them, appear as waypoints on most of the rest.
The mountain itself is Scenic Site No. 66, designated on 9 December 2009. An earlier designation over the same ground was cancelled in December 1998 and replaced by the current one, which is the kind of detail that explains why you may see two different numbers quoted.
Getting there
Daeheungsa is the easy end: it is a well-signed destination from Haenam town with a car park at the gate.
Osojae is not. Haenam publishes no bus route to the spring, so the two routes that start there need a car or a taxi. If you are walking the ridge from Osojae down to Daeheungsa, that means arranging the drop-off before you set out.
How to take it
For the peaks, walk the traverse from the main hall: 5.85 km, 4 hours 30, Noseungbong to Garyeonbong to Duryunbong and down to Pyochungsa. It is the fullest day the mountain offers.
For a half day, take the Daeheungsa loop — 3.95 km, two hours, back where it started, and the only route here that does that. It reaches the hermitages and the old tree without the ridge.
And if what you want is to cross the mountain rather than climb it, Osojae to Daeheungsa by Bukam is 4.75 km in 2 hours 10, the one route on Duryunsan that moves at a normal walking pace.