Saturate Your Heart with Color

Time spent in forest is time spent caring for yourself. Breathing deeply in phytoncide while watching the harmony of the verdant washes away the fatigue from your eyes, and clutter in your heart. Jwagusan Recreational Forest offers a variety of ways to care for your stress and tension built by the lifestyle of today.

Forest healing program uses the environmental factors in the forest to boost the body’s immune system and restore health to one’s mind and body. Even relocating activities like yoga, walking, reading, and meditation into the forest can enhance their effects many times over. Jeungpyeong’s Jwagusan Recreational Forest has offered its healing meditation programs since 2017, back when it was still named “Jwagusan Forest Meditation House”. The care and warmth put into the program is immediately apparent to the visitor.

A Site of Healing through Care, Jwagusan Forest Meditation House

The Forest Meditation House is located 300m above sea level at the midpoint of Jwagusan Mountain. Its location places the house at the point of convergence for the phytoncide generated by the lush forests in the area. This three-story building created its interior space for the visitors with the same care it took to capture the comfort of the forest in its programs. The first floor houses the craft studio, Hyu therapy room and massage chair, and aqua healing room, which handles foot bath programs. The second floor is home to the dining hall and the group meditation hall, while the third floor has meditation spaces and the health checkup room. Dainty flowerbeds dot the area round the building. The flowers grown here are used to make flower tea, some fifty varieties in total. Visitors first check their stress level and blood pressure in the 3rd floor health checkup room, and choose their tea according to their preferences and condition. You can also enjoy jeonggwa, or vegetables candied in traditional methods, made by hand using seasonal ingredients with your tea. In spring, the house reportedly serves mugwort rice cakes dusted with bean powder, made with mugwort grown in the area.

Many Shades of Forest Programs

Meditation in Jwagusan Forest Meditation House refrains from pretention. Rather than a set of arcane techniques or mastery in accessing your inner self, Forest Meditation House says that meditation is something that you attain by focusing on and enjoying the moment. In the end, enjoying the forest in its entirety is the true journey you can take to meet the one in your heart.

You can choose to walk the forest healing trails, dip your feet into the cool stream and listen to the valley, or feel the light and the wind blowing through the leaves above as you lie down on a hammock laid out between cherry trees. Forest healing programs in the Forest Meditation House include a variety of methods, such as forest walk meditation, forest yoga, bamboo rod massage, traditional tea confectionary, flower tea processing, and tea fragrance meditation.

For a more expansive experience, you can take part in their experience programs. Flower tea roasting (as tea drying process takes time, you can take a package of the same type of tea that you roasted), wood burning, natural dye, string art, herbarium, natural sculpture, and najeonchilgi (mother-of-pearl and lacquer craft) programs focus on the sense of touch to bring you closer to nature.

For more active types, Forest Meditation House offers leisure sports activities as well. The most popular program among them is the Jwagusan zipline.

Things To Do

Jeungpyeong Jwagusan Observatory

Located at the highest point of the recreational forest, this planetarium is home to one of the largest telescopes in Korea.
∇ 187, Sotjeommal- gil, Jeungpyeong-eup, Jeungpyeong-gun, Chungcheongbuk-do

Byeoljari Village

This accommodations facility is operated by the Jwagusan Recreational Forest, and is ideal for those who want to stay in the area.
∇ 187, Sotjeommal- gil, Jeungpyeong-eup, Jeungpyeong-gun, Chungcheongbuk-do

Goesan Sanmagi-yetgil Trail

This trekking course is a restoration of the old paths that the people of the region used to take in the past.
∇ 546-1, Sa-eun-ri, Chilseong- myeon, Goesan-gun, Chungcheongbuk-do

Unbo’s House, Cheongju

This house belonged to painter Unbo Kim Gi-chang, who spent his last days after his wife passed away.
∇ 92-41, Hyeongdong 2-gil, Naesu-eup, Cheongwon- gu, Cheongju-si, Chungcheongbuk-do