National park
Inwangsan Mountain
Seoul, Jongno District, 무악동 산2-1
Granite peak laced with shrines where shamans and Buddhist monks still climb to a monk-shaped sacred rock.
This guide to Inwangsan Mountain in Seoul centers on Seonbawi, the granite boulder locals have long treated as a kneeling monk, and the generations of women who climbed to press their foreheads against it. It traces how Buddhism and shamanism came to share this ridge, with eleven shrines lining the path, and tells of Guksadang, a city shrine secretly dismantled and carried up here in 1925 to save it from Japan's colonial government. Listen for a shaman's chant as you near the rock.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.