Juwangsan National Park shows a 1939 guidebook in Korean translation — free, 1 Oct to year-end

The Juwangsan National Park Office of Korea National Park Service (KNPS) is putting "Juwangsan Annaegi" on display at its Sangui Visitor Centre from 1 October 2026. The guidebook, printed in 1939, describes the mountain in text, drawings and a map, and includes the "Juwang sajeok" (周王事蹟), the legend of the exiled prince Juwang after whom the park is named. Because it was written in Japanese, ordinary hikers have never been able to read it. The park office translated it into Korean and framed copies of the pages, so an October visit — right as the maples turn — lets you see the mountain the way a visitor did 87 years ago.

Where and when can you see it?

The venue is the Sangui Visitor Centre at the Sangui entrance to the park, the main gate for the Juwang Valley trail. It reopened in a new building in 2022 and is also called the Juwangsan UNESCO Global Geopark Visitor Centre, since Cheongsong county has held geopark status since 2017. The valley trail starts right outside, so you pass the door on the way in or out. There is no ticket and no reservation: walk in any time between 10:00 and 17:00. The centre is shut on Mondays, and when a Monday is a public holiday it shuts on the following weekday instead.

What is "Juwangsan Annaegi"?

Here is what KNPS has said about it. The booklet dates from 1939 and was produced by a body called the Juwangsan Historic Sites Preservation Society (주왕산고적보전회); the text is Japanese. It contains an account of the mountain, drawings, a map, and the Juwang sajeok, the story of how the mountain got its name. The original now belongs to the National Museum of Korea, and what hangs in the visitor centre is the park office's Korean translation together with framed copies. Regional papers also give the title in Chinese characters (周王山案內記).

• Made: 1939, by the Juwangsan Historic Sites Preservation Society
• Language: Japanese (the display pairs it with a Korean translation)
• Contents: a description of the mountain, drawings, a map, and the Juwang sajeok (周王事蹟) legend
• Original: held by the National Museum of Korea — only copies are on show

How do the scenes in the old guidebook look today?

The three photographs attached to the press release show the cover with a sketch of Giam peak, an illustration of Yongchu Falls, and the passage on Giam and Daejeonsa temple. In other words, the scenes the 1939 booklet chose as the face of Juwangsan are the same ones a hiker meets first today. Giam still towers over the temple courtyard, and Yongchu Falls is still there in the valley, so the easiest way to enjoy this exhibition is to look at the drawings, then walk the valley and find the same spots.

Judging from the press photo, the translated passage on Giam and Daejeonsa carries footnotes converting the old Japanese units of length into metres. We saw it in one photograph only, so we are not quoting the figures, but it is a small window into how people measured a mountain 87 years ago — worth reading the footnotes when you are there.

Timed for the autumn colours — how to plan the visit

The park office says it scheduled the exhibition for the autumn peak season. The plan is simple: read the translation at the Sangui Visitor Centre first (it is short), pass Daejeonsa temple into the Juwang Valley trail, and walk past Giam, Yongchu Falls and Yongyeon Falls in turn. By the end you will have seen almost every scene drawn in the booklet. The photographs below are KNPS's own pictures of Juwangsan in autumn.

Know before you go

• The original is not here. The 1939 booklet is at the National Museum of Korea; the display is a Korean translation and framed copies.
• It is a set of framed pages inside the visitor centre, not a large special exhibition — allow 20–30 minutes on top of your hike.
• Closed Mondays, or the next weekday when Monday is a public holiday; check the first weekday after the early-October holidays.
• Entry to Juwangsan National Park is free; the Sangui car park is paid, and the queue for it can be long on autumn weekends.
• Enquiries: Sangui Visitor Centre +82-54-873-0231; Juwangsan National Park Office +82-54-870-5300. Both lines are answered in Korean.

In short, this is less a new attraction than an extra layer of time laid over a trail people already walk. Seeing the pencil sketch of Giam on the cover, then stepping outside to look up at the real thing, is reason enough to stop in.

Getting there, and what a non-Korean speaker gets out of it

Getting there. Juwangsan is in Cheongsong county, inland Gyeongsangbuk-do, and there is no rail line. From Seoul, KNPS's own directions are an intercity bus from Dong-Seoul Bus Terminal (동서울터미널) to Cheongsong Terminal, a local bus on to Juwangsan Terminal, then a three-minute walk to the Sangui entrance; allow about 4 hours 50 minutes door to door. Bus tickets are sold at the terminal counters and through Korean apps that generally need a Korean phone number, so buying at the counter is the practical route. By car, the Sangui car park is at the same entrance and is paid. Language. The exhibit is a Korean translation of a Japanese text, shown beside copies of the Japanese pages; we could not confirm any English labels, and the visitor centre's guided talks are in Korean. What works without Korean is the visual side — the cover sketch of Giam, the map, the drawing of Yongchu Falls — and the comparison with the real peaks and falls a few hundred metres up the trail. The trail itself is well marked and hard to lose, and we have not checked how much English the centre's permanent geology display carries, so do not count on it. Booking and payment. There is nothing to book and nothing to pay for the exhibition or for park entry. The only things that need booking at Juwangsan are the campsite and programmes on the KNPS reservation site, which is Korean-only, and none of them are required for this visit.