Almost everything written in English about Deogyusan National Park is about the other summit. Hyangjeokbong, 1,614 m, has a gondola from a ski resort and a shelter on top. Namdeogyusan is at the far end of the same ridge, 107 m lower, and the way up is a staircase.
The staircase
Korean park descriptions do not usually tell you to stay away. This one does, and it is worth taking at face value. The section grading on the same page runs moderate to hard as far as Yeonggakjae and then hard to very hard for the climb - the only course in this park graded that way.
The first 1.5 km out of Yeonggak is described as level and rated moderate, so the day divides cleanly in two. Three and a half kilometres, two and a half hours, and most of the work in the second half.
The summit is two peaks, in three counties
Rockfall closed the Samjabong to Seobong line on 8 August 2026, and a temporary bypass about 30 m below the fall opened a week later, on 15 August. Check the park’s trail-control page for the current state of that section before you go. The revealing detail is that Seobong does not appear among the park’s thirteen published courses at all - a closure notice exists for a route that officially is not there, which means people walk it.
From the top the Baekdudaegan, the spine of the peninsula, runs in both directions: south over Seobong towards the Yuksimnyeong pass, north over Muryongsan to Hyangjeokbong.
Check the gate for your trailhead, not the park
Every Korean national park runs timed entry. Most run one set of hours across the whole park. This one does not.
Yeonggak, which is the one you want for the summit, has among the earliest. Songgye is earlier still at 11:00, which is easy to overlook when planning from the other side of the mountain.
Winter, and what the park actually warns about
The park’s word for this mountain in winter is Gaegolsan, the bare-bone mountain, which is the old name for Geumgangsan in the season when the rock shows through. That is the draw. The warnings that come with it are specific.
On the Wolseongjae approach it asks for crampons from 2.5 km in. And on the two-day traverse it says plainly that the final leg, Satgatgoljae shelter down to Yeonggak, is a very difficult course and to prepare properly before starting.
Two days, one shelter
The full traverse is 26.9 km in 14 hours - Samgong, Baengnyeonsa, Hyangjeokbong, Jungbong, Dongyeopryeong, Muryongsan, Satgatjae, Namdeogyusan, Yeonggak. Its three legs of 8.5, 10.5 and 7.9 km sum exactly to the published total, as do the times.
Satgatjae shelter is the overnight stop and the only one on the southern half of the ridge: forty places, 159.71 square metres, open all year except during the spring and autumn fire-control periods, 20,000 won for a bunk midweek and 30,000 at weekends and from 1 July to 31 August and 1 October to 15 November, booked through the national park system or Kakao. The park’s facility register and its course text disagree about the capacity, 40 against 46; book on the lower figure. The name is spelled both Satgatjae and Satgatgoljae in park material, so search for either.
Two routes we have left off, and why
Where a published figure disagrees with itself but every reading produces the same difficulty, we keep the route and mark the number approximate. Where the readings produce different difficulties, we leave the route off rather than pick one. Both of these fall into the second case. The Wolseongjae line is worth knowing about anyway - the park describes it as the easier of the approaches to Namdeogyusan, and warns that the last 300 m below the summit is very steep.
What the park does not publish
No cumulative climb figure is published for any course, and no trailhead elevations, so height gained cannot be worked out from the official numbers. The course pages give no fire-season dates either: the page for this climb says only that walking is restricted during the spring and autumn fire-caution periods. Check the park’s current notice for the closure dates and the sections left open before a spring or autumn visit.
One correction to the park’s own heritage reference: the Baengnyeonsa ordination platform, on the traverse route, is described on the park site as a provincial monument under an older term. The current national register lists it as a city or provincial monument, number 42. And on closures generally, the legal basis inside a national park is Article 28 of the Natural Parks Act with a penalty under Article 86, not the forest protection law - that law excludes national park areas by its own wording, so anything citing it for a trail in here is citing the wrong instrument.