About Wibong Falls (wibong pokpo [위봉폭포])
Wibong Falls (Wibong Pokpo [위봉폭포]) was a 60m cumulative height waterfall dropping in multiple tiers.
Nearby this waterfall is the Wibongsa Temple, which is one of the major temples said to be built by the Monk Seoam in the year 604, and some of the buildings that have survived past calamities date back to the Joseon Dynasty.
So it’s possible to visit both the waterfall and temple (though we drove to each site, which were about 5 minutes apart from each other).
I was able to experience the Wibongpokpo Waterfall in a couple of different ways, and both of them were pretty easy (as the difficulty rating reflects).
First, we were able to witness this waterfall from a roadside lookout (see directions below).
At this lookout, we were able to appreciate the waterfall’s thin, multi-tiered drop amid the context of the gorge that it dropped into.
From there, I then walked along the road for about 70m to a series of steps descending into the gorge.
Along these steps were interpretive signs and inscriptions in Korean while also presenting some gorge views.
At the bottom of the steps was a small shelter as well as a continuation of the trail going both downstream and upstream.
I only went upstream from here as it was a short jaunt to the bottom of the main drops of the Wibong Falls, which looked way shorter than it did from the lookout due to the obstructing cliffs and foliage.
According to my GPS logs, this walk was a mere 200m in each direction, and it only took me about 35 leisurely minutes to do both the lookout and the steps down as well as coming back.
Authorities
Wibong Falls resides near the city of Jeonju in Wanju-gun County, Jeollabuk-do Province, South Korea. It may be administered by the local authorities of Wanju. For information or inquiries about the area as well as current conditions, you can try visiting this website for leads.
Wibong Falls is situated near the city of Jeonju in the county of Wanju.
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 Jeonju Hanok Maeul (전주한옥마을) so with that as our starting point (출발), we set up 위봉폭포 (Jeonju Falls) as the destination (도착).
This route took us about 45 minutes to go the 22km distance.
If we came from Wanju (완주군청), then Kakao Map says it would take 30 minutes to go the 22km distance.
For geographical context, Jeonju was 16km (about 30 minutes drive) south of Wanju, 100km (about 90 minutes drive) north of Gwangju, 94km (about 90 minutes drive) southwest of Daejeon, about 119km (over 90 minutes drive) northwest of Suncheon, and 216km (about 3 hours drive) south of Seoul.
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Left to right sweep of the panorama encompassing the waterfall from the roadside lookout
Downstream to upstream sweep before zooming in and panning fro top to bottom of the falls
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