About Cheonjiyeon Falls (cheonjiyeon pokpo [천지연폭포])
Cheonjiyeon Falls (Cheonjiyeon Pokpo [천지연폭포]) was a wide waterfall that was easily accessible via a relatively short flat paved walk on the western outskirts of Seogwipo City.
The waterfall is said to drop 20m (or 22m depending on which source you believe), but its width varies depending on the conditions.
During our visit in late June 2023, I made a visit to this waterfall in heavy rain, where there were distinct ephemeral segments on the left side along with a consolidated multi-segment gusher to the right.
It’s said that the name of the falls means “sky connected with the land”, and I can kind of see this association as you might be able to see where the top of the waterfall meets the sky in the photo above.
From a large car park area (see directions below), I went up to the kiosk to purchase my ticket (2000 won for adults, 1000 won for teens up to age 24).
Then, after briefly walking along the Yeonheecheon Stream (연외천), I crossed a bridge over this river, and then found myself among Jeju statues, shops, food stands, and a ticket checking kiosk.
Beyond the ticket check, I then embarked on the riverside walk, which was on a very wide asphalt path that stayed to the right side of the river (so it’s also wheelchair accessible).
During my visit, I did notice that there was a bridge going to the other side of the river along the stretch, which offered a frontal view of one of the intermediate cascades along the way.
However, the bridge and the trails on the other side were closed for some reason (I suspect the heavy rain might have something to do with it).
Thus, I can’t really say what else I could have experienced on that side of the river (more views of the falls maybe? or an alternate way to enter/leave the paid area of this waterfall?).
In any case, at some point, the walkway splits where I guess it was intended to have people going to the falls keep to the right while people coming back from the falls would be coming in from the left.
After a mere 700m or so from the ticket checking kiosk, I arrived at the end of the trail fronting the impressive Cheonjiyeon Falls.
There were some structures around this lookout (which included a water spigot as well as a shrine), but aside from that, I headed back the way I came after having had my fill of the wide waterfall.
Overall, I had spent less than an hour away from the car, which seemed to be about par for a visit to this place (rain or shine).
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Finally, it’s worth noting that apparently they do light up the falls at night from time to time, but that was something we didn’t do.
There are limited hours to the falls (though they’re open longer than most other places around Korea), and it’s open from sunrise to 10pm.
It costed me 2000 won to visit the falls as an adult, and it would be 1000 won for children, but there’s no parking fee.
Lastly, there’s another waterfall called Cheonjeyeon Falls, which is NOT the same as this waterfall despite the single letter change in the romanization of its name.
Authorities
The Cheonjiyeon Waterfall resides in Seogwipo on the southern coast of Jeju Island, South Korea. It is administered by the local authorities of Seogwipo. For information or inquiries about the area as well as current conditions, you can try visiting their website for leads.
Cheonjiyeon Falls is situated on the south side of the city of Seogwipo-si.
Rather than confuse you with a bunch of turn-by-turn directions that won’t mean anything to you, I’ll just tell you that it’s best to use a Korean routing software on a phone that’s hooked up to a Korean Network (as Google Maps doesn’t work in Korea).
We prefer using a SIM card with an unlimited data plan for this purpose so we shouldn’t be running out of data while routing (while also allowing us to use that phone as a hot spot).
Regardless of what your current location is (and South Korea is as well-connected of a country as I had ever seen), use Kakao Map app to navigate your way through all the city streets, interchanges, and local rural roads.
It even tells you the whereabouts of speed bumps, school zones, speed cameras, and all the particulars about which lane to take when there’s a decision point with multiple lanes involved.
The only catch to using Kakao Map (or any other Korean routing app) is that you’ll need to at least learn how to put your place names in Hangeul (the Korean writing system).
That’s because using romanized words and expecting the app to find it doesn’t always work, but placenames in Hangeul almost always can be found in the app.
Anyways, in our example, we were coming from the Seogwipo KAL Hotel, so with that as our starting point (출발), we set up 천지연폭포 주차장 (Cheonjiyeon Falls Parking Lot) as the destination (도착).
This route took us less than 15 minutes to go the 3km distance, but we had to be really careful of the busy five-way intersection at the entrance to the hotel because there was no traffic light!
From the Jungmun Tourist Complex, Cheonjiyeon Falls was under 30 minutes drive for the 16km distance.
From the Aqua Planet on Jeju Island, the falls was over an hour drive to go the 46km distance.
Finally, from Jeju Airport, it also would take over an hour drive to go the 45km distance to Cheonjiyeonpokpo Waterfall.
For geographical context, Jungmun-dong was about 14km (about 30 minutes drive) west of Seogwipo City and 41km (about an hour drive) south of Jeju-si.
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Left to right sweep then some zooming in on the falls before zooming out all under heavy rain
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