TheTravelManual

For 32 years this temple on the road to Jirisan charged hikers who never set foot in it. The toll booth is gone, the money that settled the fight built a lakeside forest trail, and what’s left is a 1,200-year-old temple with a pavilion on a stone arch and a gate whose calligraphy is said to hold water.

A giant rock in a mountain stream in Geochang carries four centuries of carved graffiti, a poem from Korea’s greatest Confucian scholar, a polite refusal from his rival, and the marks of two clans who spent generations arguing over who owned it. Free to enter, and you can swim.

Korea walled off a bay in 1994, killed the lake behind it, then spent three decades bringing it back with the world’s largest tidal power station. The result is a free seafront park an hour from Seoul with a 75-meter observatory and one of the best sunsets on the west coast.

An award-winning concrete museum buried in a Ganghwa hillside, whose wall labels carry Chagall, Hockney, Miro and Hirst — plus three gardens, one of them clad entirely in mirror. Hours, the ticket price, and what it actually gets you.

A temple founded in 381 CE that sits inside a fortress wall, charges nothing to enter, and hides a contemporary art gallery under its floor. Hours, parking, the tea house, and how to reach Jeondeungsa from Seoul without a car.