Our own visit, not sponsored. Booking rules, fares and hours are from the official Daegeumgul website; the monorail, visit time and closing days from Samcheok City's tourism site (checked October 6, 2026); the locations of the two old houses from the National Heritage Portal; the phone number from Naver Place. The character illustrations are GPT-generated images.
Daegeumgul Cave, Samcheok — Booking, Fares, Monorail and Visit Time (Our Summer Morning with 5 Families, 19 People, August 2026)
Our Daegeumgul Cave record 🚝
On Friday morning, August 28, 2026,
we visited Daegeumgul Cave
in Samcheok.
The Daegeumgul marker stone — gold letters carved vertically into a big natural rock, misty mountains behind
800 Hwanseon-ro
🎫 Book ahead on the official website
Opens the 1st of each month, 10:30
for the following month
💰 Adults 12,000 won
Children 6,000 won
(monorail included)
⏰ Mar–Oct 9:00–17:00
Nov–Feb 9:30–16:00
Closed on the 18th of every month
🅿 Free parking
📞 1533-8362
It was the first day of a 3-day trip
based at a guesthouse on Galnam Port in Samcheok,
and 19 of us from 5 families
(9 adults, 10 elementary schoolers)
went together.
Tickets here are booked in advance
on the official website,
so we made our booking before we left.
To say it up front:
we have no photos from inside the cave.
So we’ve written down the scenes in our photos
in time order,
and added the information
we checked in the official sources.
🪨 10:53, at the marker stone
In front of the marker stone —
a big natural rock with the three syllables ‘대금굴’ carved vertically —
we took several family photos.
Behind the stone the trees were thick,
and mist hung over the mountain ridge.
The photo from two minutes later
shows the path that continues beside the stone.
The forest path beside the marker stone — where the paving blocks turn into a wooden deck
The paved path
turns into a deck with wooden railings,
with pines and shrubs on both sides.
After this, we have no photos
of the way to the cave or inside it.
🏚 11:06, inside an old house
A ceiling with thick exposed rafters, earthen walls and wooden tools hanging on the wall
About 13 minutes after the marker stone
come three photos
of a dark wooden interior.
A ceiling with thick exposed rafters,
ochre earthen walls,
and wooden tools hanging on the wall.
A hollowed-out log tub and the green beyond the open door — the child only from behind
A hollowed-out log tub stands there,
and through the open door
the green outside comes in.
Beyond an inner partition
is a spot that looks like an agungi
(a traditional fire hole for cooking and floor heating).
From the photos alone,
it’s hard to say for sure
which house this is.
But on the same road as Daegeumgul (Hwanseon-ro)
there are two National Folklore Cultural Heritage houses,
the Shingle-roofed House (너와집) in Daei-ri, Samcheok
and the Bark-roofed House (굴피집) in Daei-ri, Samcheok
(per the National Heritage Portal),
so it looks like one of the two.
Opens the 1st of each month, 10:30
Be at the ticket office 30 min early
🎫 Booking (official website)
✔ Tickets are booked on the official website
✔ On the 1st of each month at 10:30 am,
the next month’s tickets open
(to go in late August, book on July 1)
✔ Individuals: up to 10 per booking
groups: 30–40 per booking
✔ Up to 3 bookings a year, one a month
✔ Arrive at the ticket office
at least 30 minutes before your time
(to collect tickets and get to the monorail platform)
✔ Show a printout of your booking
or the booker’s ID
💰 Fares (monorail included)
Adults 12,000 won
Seniors & teens 9,000 won
Children & soldiers 6,000 won
Groups: adults 10,000 won
seniors & teens 8,000 won
children & soldiers 5,000 won
Ages 6 and under, and parking: free
(per the official website)
🚝 Monorail & visit time
The monorail is 610 m long, carries 40 passengers,
and runs every 30 minutes
(17 runs a day in summer, 14 in winter)
A visit takes 1 hour 40 minutes:
40 minutes round trip to the cave,
1 hour inside
The cave is 1,610 m long
(main cave 730 m · branch cave 880 m),
discovered in February 2003,
opened to the public on June 5, 2007
Closed on the 18th of every month
(if that’s a holiday or long weekend, the next weekday)
(per Samcheok City’s tourism site)
We have no record of which time slots
our 19 went in, or how many in each,
so we’ve left that out.
But since individual bookings are capped at 10 people,
if you’re a big group,
it’s something to check before you book.
👍 Who this is for
✔ Anyone wondering how to book Daegeumgul
and what it costs
✔ Anyone going as a big group
with lots of kids
✔ Anyone planning a family trip
to Samcheok and the east coast
🧭 More from this trip
The guesthouse we checked into that afternoon →
Read it here
Our three-day route from Samcheok to Yangyang →
Read it here
Our photos stop at the marker stone,
the forest path and the old house,
but the booking rules, fares
and monorail details
are written up just as the official sources give them.
This is our record
of the cave five families went into together
on a late-August morning.
📍 Daegeumgul Cave — open in Naver Map
From our visit on August 28, 2026. Booking rules, fares and hours are from the official Daegeumgul website (in Korean); the monorail, visit time and closing days from Samcheok City's tourism site (in Korean) (checked 2026-10-06); the locations of the shingle-roofed and bark-roofed houses from the National Heritage Portal; and the phone number from Naver Place. All of this may change. The character illustrations are GPT-generated images.
Translated from our Korean post with AI assistance. Dates, times, fares and other numbers were checked against the Korean original, the official Daegeumgul website and Samcheok City's tourism site on October 6, 2026. The official booking pages are in Korean; we did not check whether foreign visitors can book them online. Original post (Korean)