🎧 Yul's Korea Audio Guide
Manjanggul Lava Tube, Jeju
Narrated in English with Korean phrases by YUL of KVIBE IDOLS.
🎵 Background music: Still in That Spring (그 봄에 머물러) — KVIBE IDOLS · Listen to the full song →
Full transcript
Annyeong, yeoreobun! It's Yul. Grab a jacket, because today we're going underground! This is Manjanggul, a lava tube on Jeju. What's a lava tube? Imagine a river of red-hot lava. The top cools and hardens into a roof, but underneath, the lava keeps flowing. When it drains away, an empty tunnel is left behind.
And this one is huge. The main cave is nearly nine kilometers long. Its name, Manjanggul, roughly means a cave ten thousand jang long, an old unit of length.
Inside, it stays cool all year, roughly 11 to 21 degrees Celsius. It's home to a big colony of bats, at least thirty thousand of them, in a part of the cave that's closed to visitors. Don't worry, they don't want to meet you either.
The big finale: walk about one kilometer in, and meet the star: a lava column 7.6 meters tall, described as the largest known lava column in the world. It formed when lava poured down from an opening in the ceiling. A waterfall of fire, frozen into stone. Daebak!
Manjanggul was named a Natural Monument in 1970, and it's part of the Geomunoreum Lava Tube System, listed by UNESCO in 2007 as World Natural Heritage.
Yul's tip! The floor is wet and bumpy, so wear real shoes, not sandals, and bring a light jacket. It has closed before for safety work, so check before you go.
Next, let's take a boat to a little island shaped like a sleeping cow. Kaja!
