The Most Beautiful Natural Wonders in South Korea
5 places ยท updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful natural wonders in South Korea are Seongsan Ilchulbong, Hallasan and Manjanggul and Gimnyeonggul Lava Tubes. The list covers 5 natural wonders. Last updated 13 October 2026.
South Korea's most unusual landscapes are volcanic. Jeju Island, off the southern coast, was built by eruptions over the last two million years, and its tuff cones, shield volcano and lava tubes are so well preserved that UNESCO listed them together. On the mainland, by contrast, the mountains are old, worn rock shaped by erosion into strange outlines.
Seongsan Ilchulbong, the Sunrise Peak, is a tuff cone rising straight from the sea with a bowl-shaped crater on top. Hallasan, the shield volcano at the centre of Jeju and the highest mountain in South Korea, holds a crater lake called Baengnokdam. The Manjanggul and Gimnyeonggul lava tubes run for kilometres beneath the island, and Manjanggul holds one of the tallest known lava columns. Daepo Jusangjeolli Cliff on Jeju's south coast is a wall of hexagonal basalt columns pounded by the waves. Maisan in Jinan, on the mainland, is a pair of conglomerate peaks shaped like a horse's ears, with a temple of hand-stacked stone towers at their foot.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Seongsan Ilchulbong | Volcano | |
| 2 | Hallasan | Volcano | |
| 3 | Manjanggul and Gimnyeonggul Lava Tubes | Lava tube | |
| 4 | Daepo Jusangjeolli Cliff | Cliff | |
| 5 | Maisan | Mountain |
01 Seongsan Ilchulbong
South Korea ยท 39.5 km from Jeju33.458ยฐ N 126.942ยฐ E
- UNESCO natural beauty
Korea.net / Korean Culture and Information Service ยท CC BY-SA 2.0 What makes the place geologically famous is how clearly it shows its own making. The wave-cut cliffs expose the internal layering of the cone in cross-section, a textbook of hydrovolcanic eruption that helped earn its listing in 2007 as part of the UNESCO World Heritage site Jeju Volcanic Island and Lava Tubes.
Did you know? A 2011 botanical survey recorded about 240 plant taxa on the small cone.
02 Hallasan
South Korea ยท 17.8 km from Jeju33.350ยฐ N 126.517ยฐ E
Image by tobatoppers from Pixabay The volcano is still classed as active, since it has erupted within the last ten thousand years. Historical records describe an eruption in 1007, and geological evidence points to activity at least around 2,000 years ago. The mountain supports a rich and distinct natural life: about 50 plant species found nowhere else, 121 species of birds and some 4,300 species of insects have been recorded here.
Did you know? Hallasan holds the largest wild population of the Korean fir, the tree now popular in gardens worldwide.
03 Manjanggul and Gimnyeonggul Lava Tubes
South Korea ยท 23.1 km from Jeju33.528ยฐ N 126.770ยฐ E
๊ฐํ์ ยท CC BY 4.0 The inside of the tube still records how the lava moved. Shelves along the walls mark levels where the flow stood for a while. Ropy flowstone covers the floor, lava stalactites drip from the ceiling, and here and there sit lava rafts, blocks of solidified crust that the flow carried along and dropped. 6 m high, formed where molten rock poured through a hole in the roof and piled up on the floor. It is described as the largest known anywhere.
Did you know? Gimnyeonggul is floored with shell sand blown in from the nearby beach, so its basalt walls carry limestone formations, a rare mix for a lava cave.
04 Daepo Jusangjeolli Cliff
South Korea ยท 31.6 km from Jeju33.237ยฐ N 126.425ยฐ E
Image by HanshinLyon from Pixabay What makes the place remarkable is the variety within that order. Some columns stand upright in tight ranks; others lie on their side, their hexagonal ends facing outward like the butt ends of stacked timber; at the base, waves have broken the tops into stepping-stone platforms.
Did you know? Locals long knew this shore as Jisatgae, an old name for the Jungmun area, and the cliffs are still often called the Jisatgae columns.
05 Maisan
South Korea ยท 25.8 km from Jeonju35.761ยฐ N 127.412ยฐ E
Joachim Dirauf ยท CC BY 3.0 The peaks are made of conglomerate, a rock of pebbles and gravel cemented together, laid down around a hundred million years ago in a Cretaceous lake basin and later lifted by crustal movements; fossils of freshwater fish are still occasionally found. Seen from the south, the steep flanks are pitted with hollows, large and small, that look as if the rock had been shelled.
Did you know? The roughly 80 stone towers were designated a provincial monument of North Jeolla in 1976, and CNN once listed Tapsa among Korea's 33 most beautiful temples.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented โ the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful natural wonders in South Korea?
- On our list, Seongsan Ilchulbong ranks first, followed by Hallasan and Manjanggul and Gimnyeonggul Lava Tubes.
- Is Hallasan an active volcano?
- Hallasan is considered dormant. Its last eruptions are thought to have occurred thousands of years ago, and it is the highest mountain in South Korea at about 1,950 metres.
- How was Seongsan Ilchulbong formed?
- It was created around 5,000 years ago by an eruption in shallow sea water, which shattered the magma into ash that built a steep tuff cone with a wide crater.
- What is a lava tube?
- A lava tube is a tunnel left when the surface of a lava flow cools and hardens while molten lava keeps flowing underneath and then drains away.
- How many natural wonders are on this list in South Korea?
- The list covers 5 natural wonders.