Tapsa Temple

Tapsa Temple in Jinan, Jeollabuk-do, is a small Buddhist temple famous for the striking collection of about 80 hand-piled stone pagodas that surround the temple grounds, built between 1885 and 1917 by the Buddhist ascetic Yi Gap-yong. The pagodas — some rising over 10 meters, all constructed by hand from stacked river stones without mortar — remain standing after more than a century despite typhoons, earthquakes, and repeated freeze-thaw cycles, a fact that local tradition attributes to Yi Gap-yong's spiritual devotion and Korean Buddhist scholars attribute to the specific weight-distribution engineering of the stacking technique. The temple sits at the base of the distinctive Maisan ("Horse Ears Mountain") twin peaks in Maisan Provincial Park — the two nearly-vertical rock spires that give Maisan its unique geographical profile in the Korean interior mountain landscape. The Tapsa + Maisan combination is one of the most-cited unique-geological + Buddhist heritage destinations in southwestern Korea. Free entry to temple grounds; Maisan Provincial Park has separate modest admission. Allow about 2 hours for temple + Maisan lower approach. Access: about 15 minutes from Jinan Bus Terminal by taxi. Best in autumn for foliage against the stone-spire mountain backdrop. Pair with Jinan Hakdong Village (batch 7 verified) for a Jinan cultural-and-nature day.