Deogyusan's 'Beyond Green' photo show — free all October

For one month this autumn, the colours somebody collected while walking Deogyusan will hang on the wall of the park's visitor centre. The Korea National Park Service's Deogyusan office announced in a press release dated 21 September 2026 that the photography show 'Beyond Green' (초록 너머의 덕유) will run from 1 to 31 October. The photographers were not invited artists: they were the people who took part in Colour Hunting, a nature-therapy programme the park ran for the first time this year on the Gucheondong Eosa-gil trail. Both the exhibition and the workshops alongside it are free.

What kind of exhibition is 'Beyond Green'?

In one line, it is a record show built from visitors' own photographs. The park service says it picked about 50 images out of everything programme participants had archived — scenes easy to walk past, each holding a colour of its own. The show carries the subtitle 'Colour Hunting record exhibition'.

It was put together by the Deogyusan park office with Colorlab Jeju, a colour-design company based in Aewol-eup on Jeju Island. The park service describes the aim as widening awareness of the Colour Hunting programme and sharpening visitors' eye for the park's own natural resources. The office's head of visitor facilities called it a record show made from the gathered gaze of people who love this park.

What does Colour Hunting actually involve?

Colour Hunting is a colour-based activity built around observing, recording and reinterpreting the colours in your surroundings — an education and experience programme developed by Colorlab Jeju and framed as emotional recovery rather than art class. At Deogyusan it was staged on the Gucheondong Eosa-gil, the park's signature valley trail, under the name 'Eosa-gil Palette'.

A fair amount of groundwork came first. The park service and Colorlab Jeju ran a field survey analysing and archiving the colour tones of the trail's main features, then used the results to build a toolkit — the 'Colour Walk Diary' — that participants carry with them. From the exhibition photographs, the kit breaks down roughly like this.

• Colour cards — a colour chip beside blank lines for where you found it and the name you gave it.
• A colour palette card book — a fan of cards printed 'Color Walk Deogyusan'.
• A colour frame card — printed "It's My Color!", with a window punched through it so it works as a viewfinder.

What people actually brought back is clearer from the next two pictures: the yellow of a fungus among fallen leaves, the grey of a chick in its nest. The 50-odd prints going on the wall are of that order — small finds rather than grand views.

What is different about the 3–4 October workshops?

If the show alone feels thin for the drive, aim at the first weekend of October. On Saturday 3 and Sunday 4 October two rather different sessions run, one in the morning and one in the afternoon: the morning session goes outside to collect colours on the trail, the afternoon one stays indoors to mix a colour of your own.

Participants are to receive a 'colour wellness report' derived from heart-rate variability (HRV) data, the park service says. Limited-edition merchandise in the trail's signature colours and an accompanying event are also promised, but nothing has been published about what the items are, how many there will be or how they are handed out — so keep expectations modest.

When to go, and how the booking works

The exhibition itself takes no booking at all. Turn up at the visitor centre during opening hours. The only thing that needs signing up for is the pair of workshops on 3 and 4 October, and those go through the park service's reservation site or the QR code printed on the poster.

• The visitor centre opens 10:00–17:00 and closes every Monday; when a Monday is a public holiday it closes the following weekday instead. Mondays inside the run are 5, 12, 19 and 26 October.
• If you are dropping in after a hike, plan around the 17:00 close — a return trip to the Hyangjeokbong summit leaves very little slack.
• The centre is at 96 Baengnyeonsa-gil, Seolcheon-myeon, Muju-gun, near the entrance to the Gucheondong trail.
• Nothing official has been published about where the workshops meet, what to bring, or whether they run in the rain. Phoning the park office on +82 63-320-3831 before booking is the reliable route.

What colour is Deogyusan outside the exhibition room?

The premise of the show is simple: a forest is not one green. Line up the landscape photographs the park service has published over the years and the lead colour changes with the season. These give a sense of what the 50 prints on the wall are reaching for.

In early October the mountain leans towards the autumn end of that range. Walk the Gucheondong Eosa-gil, then stop at the visitor centre on the way down, and you get the particular pleasure of finding a colour you saw an hour ago sitting inside somebody else's photograph. That is more or less what this exhibition is for.

Getting there from Seoul, and what to expect on the day

There is no railway station near the park. The usual approach is an intercity bus from Seoul Nambu Terminal (서울남부터미널) to Muju (무주), then a local bus on to Gucheondong (구천동); some departures run through to Gucheondong without the change. Allow the better part of a morning, and check current departures on the intercity bus booking site txbus.t-money.co.kr, which has an English version — timetables on this route are seasonal and third-party listings go stale quickly. Once you are there, the visitor centre sits at the trailhead, so the exhibition pairs naturally with a walk up the valley rather than being a destination by itself. Expect Korean-only captions and no audio guide; the workshops are run in Korean with no interpretation, and the park service's English reservation pages cover shelters and campsites but not visitor programmes, so booking one without Korean means asking someone to do it for you or calling the park office on +82 63-320-3831.