• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.40 no.2 s.107
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• pp.172-186
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• 2005

I examine in this paper how the contemporary sacredness of Mt. Chirisan has been modified through the reworking of the embodied experiences of the mountain. 1 examine the theme of escapism through the cases of mountain men and Chonghakdong. The two mountain men, Huh Man-Soo and Ham Tae-Sik, tacitly suggested a modem aesthetic and environmentalist view of nature by articulating a typical form of appreciating nature in a transition period from pre-modern to modern society. Mountain men mediated their own personal dreams of revitalizing the Taoist utopian place with their social practices of modernizing and democratizing the appreciation of nature. Ultimately, the appearances and practices of mountain men symbolize the end of the pre-modern geographical imagination of the mountain as distinctive plate outside society (real world). Therefore, the vision of modem civic-national landscape, national park, was made concrete at the very site where the people's dreams of utopia, the inherited sacredness of the mountain and people's religious beliefs in its protective power were terminated.