Daraengi Village

Gacheon Daraengi is a village on the south coast of Namhae where the land drops straight into the sea and there is no flat ground at all, so the villagers built some: around a hundred stacked terraces, held by dry stone retaining walls, running from the houses down to the cliff edge, some of them only wide enough for a couple of rows of rice. They were made by hand over generations and are still farmed, which is why the site is designated as a scenic and agricultural heritage landscape rather than preserved as a ruin. The terraces flood and reflect the sky in late spring when they are planted, and turn gold before the September harvest - those are the two weeks worth timing. A path runs down through the village to the shore, and a coastal trail continues along the cliffs. Everything is steep; coming back up is the hard part.

What you actually see

• The stacked terraces - about a hundred layers to the cliff edge.
• The dry stone walls - hand-built retaining walls holding each level.
• The flooded reflections - late spring, when the paddies are filled.
• The coastal path - the trail along the cliffs below the village.

When to go

May to June for the flooded terraces and September for the gold before harvest. Those two windows are the whole point; outside them the terraces are bare earth or stubble.

Honest expectations

It is a working farm village on a steep slope - the climb back up from the shore is hard, paths are narrow, and the fields belong to people. Parking above is very limited and fills at weekends.

Nearby

Boriam hermitage and the German village are elsewhere on Namhae.