tourism

Podok Hermitage in Inner Kumgang of Mt Kumgang is a hermit’s cottage in the period of the feudal Joson dynasty (1392-1910).

The hermitage, which is known to have been originally built in the period of Koguryo (277 BC-AD 668), was rebuilt in 1675. It stands halfway up a 20-odd-metre-high precipice at Punsol Pool in Manphok Valley, as if it hangs there.

It looks like a three-storey building as it was built by covering a 3.35-metre-long and 0.85-metre-wide single-storey hip-saddle roof house with gable roof and shed roof structures in layers.

The building, supported by a 7.3-metre-high narrow copper pillar, looks like a garden in the air lifted by the mists swirling round the precipice. The copper pillar fixed in 1511 is a wooden pillar wrapped with 19 copper plates, showing the unique architecture of the Korean ancestors.

It is said that in the late 14th century a poet of Koryo (918-1392) composed a famous poem on the precipice, seeing Podok Hermitage which looked like floating in the air.