Dasan Chodang in Gangjin, and the ridge path an exiled scholar walked for tea

The path up to Dasan Chodang (다산초당) doesn’t really climb. It picks its way. Pine and cedar roots have broken through the packed earth and lie across it like the rungs of a fallen ladder, worn by shoes to the colour of old chestnut, so most people go up watching their feet. At the top is a clearing above Gangjin Bay, on the far south-western coast of the peninsula. Here the scholar Jeong Yak-yong (정약용) spent the last decade of an eighteen-year exile. Over a low ridge behind it stands the temple he walked to for tea.

Why a thatched hall wears tiles

Jeong is better known by his pen name, Dasan (다산). He took it from the hill: 茶山, tea mountain, for the wild tea that grew on the slopes of Mandeoksan (만덕산) above the village of Mandeok-ri. Chodang means thatched hall. Yet the building at the top of the path has a tile roof. It is a later reconstruction on the old site, and that mismatch is the first honest thing the place tells you. This is a memorial built where a house once stood, not a house that survived.

Two smaller timber pavilions stand on either side of it, Dongam (동암) to the east and Seoam (서암) to the west. By local account Dongam held his books and was where he did most of his writing, including Mongmin simseo (목민심서), his long manual on how a county magistrate should treat the people under him. The pavilions are plain, with paper-latticed doors and narrow wooden verandas. You look in rather than walk through, and on a quiet morning the only sounds are wind in the bamboo and someone on the path below catching their breath.

The four marks he left on the hill

The guides at the site and the boards beside the hall talk about the Dasan sagyeong (다산사경), four small things Jeong made or marked himself. Behind the hall, a face of bare rock carries two carved characters, 丁石, jeongseok, his family name and the word for stone, cut shallow enough that you have to look for them. Below it is Yakcheon (약천), a spring he is said to have cleared by digging out the wet ground until clean water came.

In front of the hall lies Dajo (다조), a broad flat stone he is said to have used as a hearth for brewing tea, with pine cones gathered from the slope as fuel. To one side is Yeonji seokgasan (연지석가산), a small square pond with a heap of stones piled in its centre, the stones carried up from the shore below. None of the four is impressive on its own. Together they read like the marks of a man who had a lot of time and wanted it to leave something behind.

다산초당 가는 길은 오르막보다 나무뿌리가 먼저 발에 걸린다.

The ridge path to Baengnyeonsa

Past Dongam, the trail goes on to Cheonilgak (천일각), a pavilion added much later on a bluff that looks out over the flat water of the bay. From there it turns inland and up. It is a narrow earth path through camellia, bamboo and the low tea bushes that gave the hill its name, and a walk most people finish in well under an hour each way. The gradient is gentle but the surface isn’t. Stones and roots stay damp under the canopy long after rain.

The story told at both ends of the path is of a friendship. Hyejang (혜장), a monk at Baengnyeonsa (백련사), and the exiled Confucian scholar traded tea and talk across this ridge, and by most accounts Jeong took his tea habit from the temple side. Baengnyeonsa sits in a forest of old camellias, and in the cold months the flowers fall whole, still bright red, onto the moss. Korean visitors often point out that they drop by the head instead of shedding petals. The temple courtyard is small and lived in: monks’ rubber shoes lined up at the steps, a tap with a ladle, and a view down to the same bay you saw from Cheonilgak.

Down in town: the tavern room and the full table

Before he moved up the hill, Jeong lodged in Gangjin-eup (강진읍), the county town, in the back room of a tavern kept by an old woman. The site has been rebuilt as Sauijae (사의재), a cluster of thatched buildings around a yard. The name means a room for four things kept proper: thought, appearance, speech and conduct. It sits close to the town centre and makes a good first stop if you arrive by bus with time before heading out to Mandeok-ri.

Gangjin belongs to the Namdo (남도) food country of South Jeolla, and many visitors come for hanjeongsik (한정식), the full-table meal of rice, soup and a crowd of small dishes: fermented seafood, seasoned greens, grilled fish, and sometimes raw crab. Many hanjeongsik houses set a table for two or more and price it by the table, so a solo traveller should ask at the door before sitting down. At the foot of the chodang path, the Dasan Museum (다산박물관) holds copies of his writings and explains the exile in more detail than the boards on the hill.

Getting there, and getting back down

For most visitors the simplest way in is by bus. Express and intercity buses run to Gangjin terminal from Seoul and from Gwangju’s U-Square terminal (유스퀘어). Times and fares are on the operators’ booking sites and at the counters, and they are worth checking a few days ahead for weekend travel. From Gangjin-eup, county buses toward Mandeok-ri and the chodang run infrequently. The timetable is posted at the terminal and on the Gangjin county website, and the taxi rank outside the terminal is the fallback.

Go early in the day. You get the path before tour groups and the light on the bay from Cheonilgak while it is still low. Camellia season at Baengnyeonsa runs through the colder months, and early autumn is cool and dry underfoot. Hours and any admission for the museum and Sauijae are set by the county, and the temple posts its own notices, so confirm on the county’s tourism pages or at the site. Wear shoes with real grip, because the root path is unkind to smooth soles when wet.

The mistake to avoid is ending at Baengnyeonsa with no plan for getting down. The temple road is quiet, buses there are sparse and taxis rarely pass. Either walk back over the ridge to where you started, which is pleasant in reverse, or save a local taxi number at the terminal before you set out.