While the mountains of South Korea are often highlighted in blogs, one of the hidden gems of this country are the numerous caves that have been outfitted for family friendly exploration.
Located only a 5 minute drive from Danyang (단양), a beautiful centrally located town in Korea at the base of Sobaeksan National Park, the Gosu cave is emphasized on all the tourist maps. This cave is perhaps the biggest highlight of the Danyang Geopark, one of the nine National Geoparks of Korea.
The caves defining feature lies in its unique course design. It isn’t just a flat raised path the brings you through different sized caverns. Instead, the cave is a 3D exploration experience wherein you climb up and down 3-story spiral staircases, through narrow openings and snake your way along the winding passages. Where most caves have big caverns lit up to show the true scale of its grand size, this cave is tight and complex. You can’t help but to brush against the walls.
Address:
Gosu Cave
충북 단양군 단양읍 고수동굴길 8 고수동굴
https://naver.me/xb7Qel1I
The Cave
For a parking fee of 3,000 won you enter the Gosu Cave parking lot, which has a dozen or so restaurants, a handful of cafes and a number of ice cream spots (can recommend the ice cream!). Located on the far end of the parking area is a path with little shops selling local dried mountain veggies, leading up to the cave entrance. This path is marked in the Korean sign “동굴입구”, meaning cave entrance.
At the top of the short path, a fancy looking entrance stands before you.
Jump to Hours and Admission
After purchasing your tickets you are directed to enter a smallish room with a pretty display area with lots of pictures and even some impressive rock samples. This area answers some questions you might have about how the cave was formed, why the cave can maintain the same temperature all year long etc. But it’s all in Korean. The only English here is the 고수동굴 written as Gosu Cave, the categories of prices written on the admission cost board and a couple of warning signs.
You are given gloves at the entrance for free, which are meant to protect you from accidentally getting hurt. But that’s not to say it’s a dangerous experience. The whole cave has the metal railings and walk ways, pictured above, but if you don’t pay attention there are many places to hit your head or to trip on the stairs.
There are no shortage of beautiful cave features to marvel at along the .9 km course.
Aside from the lights of the warning signs, all the cave lights are white. But the warning lights made for some nice opportunities to take colorful photos.
I’m going to leave out specific information about the cave’s geological features. I believe this is an experience best done without a lot of spoilers. The members of my group who just knew we were going to ‘a cave near Danyang’ were the ones most blown away as the path unfolded in front of them.
Outside the cave there were a number of photo zone spots. Not to mention a giant bat serving as the cave’s mascot. But there are no wild bats in the cave!
Drawbacks of Gosu Cave
– Expect to be stuck waiting at points in the cave. Since the cave is so narrow, with lots of steep, winding stairs, there were a number of points where we were waiting or in slow moving traffic. You will want to avoid post lunch times. We went in right at lunch and we were stuck waiting in the cave a bit, but as we were coming out closer to 2pm there was a massive amount of people entering the cave.
I would recommend going in the morning maybe 10-11 am. Additionally, like most tourist sights, weekdays are less busy than weekends.
– It’s quite cramped at spots and with the constant waiting, it can make you feel even more closed in. While it wasn’t much of a problem for our group, I could see someone who is afraid of small spaces finding this experience worse than most commercial caving packages.
– I found the lack of a useful ‘map’ style signs to be less than ideal. All the signs were in Korean, but were exclusively about the geological processes that it takes to form the various features. The adorable map featured below with the cutely named features and placed outside the cave, is inaccurate to the course you take and those landmarks are never referenced in the cave itself. I could remember and guess 2-3 of the spots, but I missed the majority due to the lack of any markings in the cave.
There was a ‘map’ in the cave, but it’s a 2D map of the whole cave, including the sections the course doesn’t take you. Since it’s a complex, multistory path, the map they do provide is fairly useless. Not a big deal, unless the traffic situation bothers you so much and you want to get a handle on what’s left.
Admission and Hours
Cost of Admission: 11,000 won for adults, 7,000 won for middle school and high school students, 5,000 won for elementary students to 4 years olds, 5,500 won for people older than 65 years old, and free for children under 4 years old.
Hours: As can be seen in the below image, from April from October, the cave begins selling tickets at 9am and stops at 5:30pm. Everyone must be out of the cave by 6:30pm. For the rest of the year, November to March, the last ticket sold is at 5pm and leaving time is 6pm.
Additional Resources:
The cave website appears to be only in Korean, but is full of interesting information about the cave, including;
– Time of creation: The parent rock was created 500 million years ago and then the cave was formed about 2 million years ago
– Cave length: total length of 1,395m (940m open)
– Cave structure: Three-story structure
– Cave location: 160m to 195m above sea level
– Temperature in the cave: 14-15 degrees Celsius throughout the year
– Opening time: October 1, 1976
– Accumulated number of visitors: approximately 22 million
The cave also has an Instagram account, with their adorable mascot being featured heavily.
Happy Exploring everyone!
