Gumunso (Gangwon Paleozoic National Geopark)

This description was machine-translated from the Korea Tourism Organization's Korean original.

Taebaek Gumunso (求門沼) lies amid the watercourse at the mouth of the Hwangjicheon Stream. Gumun (求門) is an old word for a hole or cave and means “a marsh with a cave.” Today the Hwangjicheon Stream flows through a fluvial cave and Gumunso, then joins the Cheoramcheon Stream and continues into the Nakdonggang River; before the cave opened, however, the Hwangjicheon Stream made a wide bend around the southwest of the cave, and after the cave was pierced it came to flow as it does today. The limestone near Taebaek Gumunso yields sedimentary structures such as mud cracks, ripple marks, salt traces, and bird’s-eye structures, as well as diverse fossils including trilobites, brachiopods, and cephalopods, so one can see both the depositional environment and biota of the Early Paleozoic at the same time. The watercourse of the lower Hwangjicheon Stream flowing through the cave is also, together with the Hyeonnaecheon Stream, a place of great scholarly interest for studying changes in river courses. Gumunso is recorded as Cheoncheon (穿川: a river with a hole through it) in old documents such as the Sejong Sillok Jiriji, and together with various legends its scenery is very beautiful. The paleoenvironment and erosional landforms of Taebaek Gumunso not only possess diverse topographic and geologic characteristics such as sedimentary structures and erosional landforms, but also have great academic value as important material for research on the paleoenvironment of the Early Paleozoic. (Source: Korea Heritage Portal)