Gilpost · Muju-gun, Seolcheon-myeon
Gucheondong Songeojang
구천동송어장 Gucheondong is the valley; songeo is trout and jang a farm — the trout farm in the Gucheondong valley, which is also its restaurant.
횟집 · Muju-gun, Seolcheon-myeon
Data as of · Published ·
Gucheondong Songeojang is a trout restaurant inside Deogyusan National Park, beside the Eosa-gil path along the Gucheondong valley — and the only rest stop on it. You cannot drive here: it is 3.3km from the Gucheondong car park, about an hour on foot. The trout is raised in stream water in the tanks next door and served raw, from ₩50,000 for two. There are pancakes and acorn jelly and bellflower root (₩15,000–₩25,000) and a bibimbap, and with the sashimi you can add a spicy stew at ₩10,000 for four. It is licensed to sell alcohol inside the park, which is unusual: the local unfiltered rice wine is ₩6,000. There are tables indoors and out under the trees, and five of our six writers sat outside. You can also just buy a drink or an ice cream and walk on. Open every day from ten until six. The lavatory is the old pit kind. The posts we read run from October 2024 to August 2026.
The basics
| Address | 전북특별자치도 무주군 설천면 백련사길 267 267 Baengnyeonsa-gil, Seolcheon-myeon, Muju-gun, Jeonbuk-do |
|---|---|
| Phone | 063-322-3121 |
| Typical spend | ₩50,000 – ₩80,000 only 1 of 11 dishes carries a price |
| Floor area | 99 m² |
| Status | In business |
When it opens
Of 4 posts: 3 wrote Daily 10:00–18:00.
| Open | Daily | 10:00–18:00 3 of 4 posts last seen 2026-08 |
|---|
Counted from what bloggers wrote in their posts; we did not confirm it with the restaurant. Where the values differ, it may be a change over time rather than a disagreement, so we show when each one was written.
These hours are counted from the posts we read. Shops change them without notice — check Naver Place before you go. 
Place — check hours
What sets it apart
- The tables under the trees are the point of this place. Five posts describe them and none says otherwise. There is a room inside, and four of the five chose to sit out — on a fine day everybody else was outside too; blue chairs laid out in the shade, and a meal in the valley air is what a holiday is for; good air and an open view. Two note that it stays cool even in summer, being up a mountain — anyone but the most heat-averse can eat outside. The one writer who sat inside describes a room with a Chinese-character folding screen, all old feeling; another calls the building exactly what a mountain restaurant should be, and the more likeable for being unchanged. One calls the space, inside and out, generous; nobody finds it cramped.
- You cannot eat the trout alone. Two posts record the threshold, and for one it meant years of walking past: a hiker who came up Deogyusan mostly on her own could only look, because the sashimi takes two — until a party of five finally made it possible. The other, reading the 2026 menu, notes that it starts at ₩50,000 for two. They may press you to order more. A party of four who asked for the two-person size were told, firmly, that everyone ends up ordering extra and they should take a bigger one; they stood their ground, and afterwards concluded that two portions feed four if you order other dishes too. On the sizes the posts disagree: another writer took the top size and found the portion smaller than she expected, and a third was told the largest is reckoned at four grown men.
- That it does not smell of river fish is the centre of what is written here. Two say so and none says otherwise. One knows trout well enough to price the difference: around Daejeon it is mixed with vegetables and chilli paste and dusted with bean flour precisely because of the soft texture and the smell, and here for the first time she ate it as one eats sea fish — springy, and with none of that smell. The other found no fishiness and a finish like flounder. Two reach for the water as the reason — trout raised on water drawn from the Gucheondong stream, which one writer, having seen that water, doubts is matched anywhere in the country; and live stream water piped in from the park. What we can vouch for is that they wrote it, and no more.
- One of the six ends with "good, but not worth the journey" — and we put that one first. It is a party of four, and they scored it: taste three stars, hygiene three, friendliness two, atmosphere four. Of the trout: like salmon to look at but chewier, no fishiness, a finish like flounder — and, unanimously, fine but not something to seek out. Of the pancake: not much in it for the money, and ordinary. Only the atmosphere got four. Another ends at the opposite pole — the walk is long and hard and the place is worth all of it, and, she says flatly, the best trout she has eaten. The two did not eat the same thing: one had two portions, the other the largest size, four people against five. Six posts are too few to measure a disagreement with. What we can count is that one writer wrote it.
What 5 bloggers said
We read all 5 in full. The most common claims are “Large portions” (1) and “Roomy” (1).
What they liked
What they struggled with
Things you can check on site
| Outdoor terrace seating | 5 of 5 posts |
|---|---|
| A minimum number of portions on the first order | 2 of 5 posts |
These are raw counts, not percentages. Someone who did not mention something is not someone who disagreed.
What people order
The most ordered dish is songeo hoe (송어회) — 4 of 5 posts.
The prices here are what bloggers wrote down in their posts, and they may have changed since. Check Naver Place for the current menu and prices. This list is not a menu board — it counts what bloggers actually ordered and ate. Check on Naver Place
What to order
Sides, and what comes with it
To drink
Parking
2 posts say you cannot park. None say you can.
| Posts saying you cannot | 2 of 5 posts |
|---|
No car reaches this restaurant, and that is the most important thing about it. Two writers explain why: it is about an hour's walk from the national park car park, and the only vehicles allowed inside are those of monks, park staff, and cars carrying a disabled passenger. A third simply prints "no parking". One adds that for anyone with limited mobility there is a shuttle bus, and gives its timetable. So you leave the car at Gucheondong and walk. Two give the distance — 3.3km from the car park, about an hour — which agree. One places the restaurant just above Guwoldam, halfway along the path; another says that after you cross the bridge at the midpoint, the rest stop and the lavatory appear. One writer notes the Gucheondong car park is free and roomy — that post is about the trek rather than the meal.
Who came, and with whom
| Group visit | 2 of 5 posts |
|---|---|
| Family visit | 1 of 5 posts |
Getting there
Getting inside
| Toilet inside | yes 0 · no 1 (of 5 posts read) |
|---|
Nobody says what floor this is on. In seven posts there is nothing about a ground floor, an upstairs or a step. Three describe the building — a mountain restaurant exactly as one should look, unchanged; a poem by Kim Chi-ha pinned to the wall; a Chinese-character screen inside — and none of them mentions a level. There is something to infer: it reads as an old single-storey building beside the stream, and one writer notes that the rest area faces the dining room across the path, while another says the lavatory is a separate building again. So it appears to be several small buildings rather than one — and how you move between them, nobody records.
Nobody says whether a wheelchair or a pushchair can get here. In all seven posts the words wheelchair, pushchair, ramp, threshold and step appear not once — searched by machine and checked by hand. And nowhere does the question weigh more than here, at a restaurant inside a national park that no car reaches and that is 3.3km from the nearest road. Three things can be salvaged from the posts. First, a car carrying a disabled passenger may enter the park — one writer lists monks, park staff and exactly that as the permitted vehicles. Second, there is a shuttle for those who cannot walk it, whose timetable one writer photographs. Third, the lavatory is a pit toilet in a separate building outside. None of which amounts to saying you can get in. How far the car comes and where it stops, whether the path to the door is level, whether there is a step out to the tables, whether that lavatory can be entered — not one person writes it. This is not a finding that the place is inaccessible; it is a finding that nobody wrote it down, and getting it wrong here costs three hours. Worth ringing 063-322-3121, and the park office about the vehicle permit and the shuttle.
The lavatory is a separate small building outside, and it is a pit toilet. One writer looked: a little building next to the stacked drink crates, still the old kind — she guesses because getting permission to build anything inside a national park is not simple. Another prints it in her information line: a lavatory, of the traditional sort. A third, walking the trail, notes that this is where it appears: cross the bridge at the midpoint and you come to the rest stop and the lavatory. How many cubicles, and whether it is split by sex, nobody says. That this is where the trail's lavatory is matters to anyone walking it — and so does the fact that it is a pit.
No one mentioned: Second floor · In a basement · Lift to the floor · Ramp at the door · Step at the entrance · Step-free access · Accessible toilet · Separate restrooms. That is not the same as there being none — it means we could not confirm it. Worth calling ahead, and do tell us: we will put it here.
How to read these posts
- Posts saying they paid themselves1 of 5 posts
- Posts saying nothing either way4 of 5 posts
Posts that followed a TV spot
Of the 6 posts we gathered, 1 went up on a single day right after a TV spot and show no sign of a visit. They retell the broadcast, so we left them out of the counts.
We do not discard them. That a TV spot produced a burst of posts is itself something worth knowing about a place, and a star rating will not show it.
When the posts appeared
Month by month
| Month | Posts |
|---|---|
| 2024-10 | 1 |
| 2025-01 | 1 |
| 2025-08 | 1 |
| 2026-08 | 2 |
What we do not know
- The only way here is on foot — and closing time has to be worked out in walking. Not one post says how to get here by public transport: which bus reaches the Gucheondong car park, or how long it takes from Muju town, appears nowhere in the six. All we have is the distance from the car park — 3.3km by one account, an hour on foot by another. There is a shuttle bus for those who cannot walk it. One writer recommends it for anyone with limited mobility and photographs the timetable and the notice beside it. But nobody transcribes that timetable, so how often it runs, and when, we do not know. Nor where it is caught. One sum we have not done for you. The place opens at ten and shuts at six, and the walk in is an hour — so eating late and walking out means walking out in the dark. No writer works this through: all six came at lunchtime or mid-walk. A guess is not something we can count, so if you are planning a late visit it is worth ringing 063-322-3121 first.
- Nobody writes about waiting, one way or the other. In seven posts there is no queue, no reservation, no full tables and no empty ones. There is one thing to infer — an hour's walk is likely to spread arrivals out. One writer was startled that a restaurant existed up here at all; another says it is hard even to find reviews of it. But that is an inference, and nobody describes an autumn weekend. We have six posts, and they cluster in summer and early autumn.
- Why six and not twenty-six — the registered name is also a motorway service area's. This business is on our books as "Deogyusan Hyugeso", and there is a Deogyusan Hyugeso on the Tongyeong–Daejeon expressway, spelled identically, in a different part of Muju. So of the twenty-six posts collected, nineteen were about a rest stop and said nothing about us at all — six about the motorway one (a rice-bowl review, a baby-feeding-room review, a holiday round-up, the caterer's press release, a trade newsletter, and a list naming it by its expressway address), eight about other rest stops (Geumsan, Jinan, Geochang twice, Cheonan, Okcheon, Seongsamjae, and some unnamed), one about the kiosk at the top of the gondola, one about a shelter by a stone gate fifteen kilometres away, and one machine-written itinerary that reaches as far as a rest stop on Jeju. We removed them from the list. Of the seven that remain, one is a hiking club's log, written walking past — the trout farm, a look and no more, and soju and beer at six thousand each. Reading the price board is an observation; eating is not, so we left it out of the count. And one of the six did not eat the trout — a walker who bought a single drink at the trout restaurant-cum-rest-stop and carried on. Since this place is the only rest stop on the path as well as a restaurant, we counted that as a visit; but it is all that post gives us. So six means five who ate the trout and one who bought a drink. The place goes by several names — Gucheondong Songeojang (the name on its Naver listing and on the check-ins), Deogyusan Gucheondong Songeo Hoetjip & Deogyusan Hyugeso, Deogyusan Gucheondong Songeojang, and — painted large on the sign, says one writer — simply Deogyusan Trout Sashimi. One post's phone number differs from the rest: three give 063-322-3121 and one gives 063-322-3127. No post discloses sponsorship; one says she paid her own way.
- It is licensed to sell alcohol inside a national park — and since only one post says so, we quote it. Drinking is not permitted in the parks, and this place trades under an exception. Two writers did drink the makgeolli, one could not because she was driving, and the hiking-club log we did not count prices soju and beer at six thousand — none of which contradicts it. Why the exception exists, since when, and on what conditions, nobody writes. One person was told it, or understood it, and we know no more. Two writers note that they could not put their feet in the stream, it being a drinking-water protection zone — the same park rules, holding firmly a few metres away.
Sources (5)
Every number above was counted from the posts below.
- 덕유산 어사길 송어회 | 무주 구천동 계곡 송어회 식당 솔직 후기 2026-08-20 · 주주부부가 간다 · via Daum
- 무주 구천동 어사길 맛집, 덕유산 송어회 후기 (메뉴판 가격 포함) 2026-08-02 · 안녕하농 · via Daum
- 덕유산국립공원 등산로 맛집 | 구천동송어횟집 & 휴게소 2025-08-06 · 여행을 즐기는 운동인
- <무주 구천동 송어횟집> 무주 덕유산 등산로에 위치한 "구천동송어장" 송어횟집 솔직한 후기 소개글 2025-01-02 · 수후니 - 맛집, 일상 등 다양한 정보가 있는 블로그 · via Daum
- 무주 송어 맛집 덕유산 구천동 송어장 내돈내산후기 2024-10-28 · 피트 방문운동센터(대전방문재활운동)님의 블로그 · via Daum
We opened all 261 candidate posts and kept 5 as evidence.