Yongneup of Mt. Daeam — Korea's Only Alpine Peat Moor Ramsar Site (Republic of Korea)

Yongneup, on the upper slopes of Mt. Daeam (1,280 m) in Inje County, Gangwon Province, is South Korea's only high-altitude peat-forming moor and, since 28 March 1997, the country's first Ramsar-listed wetland (Ramsar Site No. 898). The peat formed over roughly 4,000 years, reaches 1.5 m in depth, and accumulates at only 0.5-1 mm per year. It is jointly protected as a Natural Monument and Ramsar site by the Ministry of Environment, the Cultural Heritage Administration and the Korea Forest Service.

A 2025 peer-reviewed study (Diversity, MDPI) analysed 200 systematically placed 1x1 m quadrats across the moor and its transitional zone, recording 130 herbaceous taxa across nine distinct plant communities. Using CHAID decision-tree analysis, researchers established quantitative environmental thresholds for community-composition shifts: 22.0 cm and 48.3 cm peat depth, 8.93 mg/kg available phosphorus, and 64.5% organic-matter content.

This is protection-and-monitoring evidence rather than an active carbon-payment or large-scale rewetting scheme: no site-specific greenhouse-gas flux or sequestration-rate measurements were found, so the carbon-storage value implied by the slow peat-accumulation rate should be read as indicative, not verified. The site's small size (roughly 210 m by 275 m) also limits how much can be generalised from it, but the rigor of its long-term ecological monitoring is unusual among the world's high-altitude peatlands.