A day among Jeju's eastern oreum, the grass cones locals climb after work

On Jeju, the mountain everyone names is Hallasan (한라산), the shield volcano at the island's centre. The ones islanders actually climb are the oreum (오름) — the roughly 360 smaller parasitic cones scattered across the pasture and farmland, most of them a fifteen-to-thirty-minute walk to the top. The eastern uplands around Gujwa-eup (구좌읍) hold the densest and best-kept cluster, and you can link three of them in a single unhurried day with a rental car, no reservations, and a windbreaker you will be glad you packed.

Start at Abu Oreum

Abu Oreum (아부오름) sits inland near Songdang-ri (송당리) and asks almost nothing of you. From the gravel car park a path climbs a false-flat cattle slope, and in about ten minutes the rim levels off and the crater opens below — a shallow green bowl, roughly 50 metres deep, ringed by a planted circle of cypress and pine that someone laid out in a near-perfect ellipse decades ago. The 1999 film Lee Jae-su's Uprising (이재수의 난) used the hollow, and grazing cattle still work the outer flank. Local walkers arrive with a thermos and sit on the edge rather than lap the rim. Parking is free; give it an hour, most of it spent not walking. The trailhead is about a fifteen-minute drive from the village of Songdang, where the 810-2 branch bus from Sehwa also runs.

The ridgelines of Yongnuni

From Abu the road east runs between batdam (밭담), the low black basalt walls, dry-stacked without mortar, that quilt Jeju's fields into a dark honeycomb. They lead to Yongnuni Oreum (용눈이오름), whose name means dragon's eyes for the twin hollows notched into its summit. Its ridgelines fold like poured fabric, changing shape with every ten steps you take along the rim — the reason the late landscape photographer Kim Young-gap (김영갑) returned to it for years. The climb is gentle, twenty minutes at most on a grassed track, but the cone was closed to walkers from 2021 for natural restoration after the turf wore through, so check that the current section is open before you commit. The wind at the top is not gentle. In autumn the whole summit runs to eoksae (억새), the silver plume grass, and it moves in sheets.

The oreum do not compete with Hallasan. They are what you climb when you have the whole afternoon and nowhere you have to be.

A detour to Dumoak

If the light is flat or the wind has driven you off the ridge, drop south to Samdal-ri (삼달리) and the Kim Young-gap Gallery Dumoak (김영갑 갤러리 두모악), set inside a closed elementary school the photographer converted before he died of Lou Gehrig's disease in 2005. Admission is 4,500 won for adults, and the rooms are hung almost entirely with his black-and-white studies of Yongnuni and the eastern grasslands — the same cones you have just walked, seen across thirty years of weather. It closes on Wednesdays. The garden he planted is worth the walk to the far wall.

Finish on Darangshi

Darangshi Oreum (다랑쉬오름) is the steep one, the so-called queen of the eastern cones, 382 metres at the lip and a crater nearly 115 metres deep — almost as far down as the hill stands above the fields. The path up is a real climb, a switchbacking staircase of packed earth and log risers that takes twenty to thirty minutes and leaves most people breathing hard at the top. The reward is a full 360-degree circuit of the coast, with the tuff cone of Seongsan Ilchulbong (성산일출봉) rising out of the sea to the east and the smaller Aoreum beside you. Go late, when the day buses have gone and the grass turns bronze; the west rim holds the last light. Parking at the base is free, and there is a public toilet but no shop, so carry water.

Getting there and getting it right

A rental car is the honest answer — expect 40,000 to 70,000 won a day from the airport counters, and factor that the three trailheads sit five to ten minutes apart on quiet farm roads with room to pull off. Without a car it is harder but not impossible: from Jeju Bus Terminal take an intercity bus toward Seongsan, change at Sehwa (세화) for the 810-1 or 810-2 loop, which passes near Darangshi and Yongnuni, and reckon on a flat 1,150-won fare each leg with plenty of waiting. Come in October or early November if you want the silver grass, or a clear winter afternoon if you want the long views without the crowds. The one mistake to avoid is treating these as a summit dash: the oreum reward the slow lap of the rim, not the sprint to the top, and the wind will punish anyone who climbs Darangshi in shorts on a bright day expecting warmth.

제주 사람들은 힘든 날 오름에 오른다고 한다.