yakcheonsa temple jeju Tour
The story of the founding of Yakcheonsa Temple is unknown as there are no remaining records. During the Unified Silla era, there was a big international temple called Beophwasa located halfway up Mt. Hallasan, which is not far from the temple, and its associated hermitages would have been scattered nearby.
Yakcheonsa Temple is located on a site where a mineral water spring flows from the ground year round. Long before 1982, when the temple was established, Yaksuam Hermitage was located there. According to some records, Ven. Bang Donghwa stayed at the hermitage in the Jungmun area for a while to recover his health after he was released from prison. He was imprisoned in 1918 because of his involvement with the anti-Japanese independence movement initiated by the Jejudo religious community.
For centuries, locals in the region had called the site of the spring “Dwaeksaemi,” a Jejudo word meaning “a mineral spring with good quality water.” According to another story, in the 1960s, a Confucian scholar named Kim Hyeong-gon was praying for 100 days in a small cave. He drank some mineral water given to him in a dream and recovered his health. He then built Yaksuam to express his gratitude to the Buddha and did his Buddhist practice there until the end of his life