Mountain · North Korea
Paektu-san
Paektu-san is the highest point on the Korean peninsula, a wide volcano whose crater holds a deep blue lake called Chonji, the Heaven Lake. It last erupted in 1903.
Picture credit: Yumeto (CC BY-SA 4.0) · lienyuan lee (CC BY 3.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Paektu-san?
Paektu-san is part of the Changbai Mountains.
You will find it in: North Korea.
Summit: 41.993° N, 128.077° E
The story behind it
Paektu-san lies on the border between North Korea and China, where it is known as Changbaishan. The name means "white-headed mountain": the summit is pale with light pumice and with snow for much of the year. Inside the crater sits Chonji, the Heaven Lake, twelve to fourteen kilometres around, 213 metres deep on average and 384 metres at its deepest spot. That crater was blasted open around the year 946 in one of the largest eruptions of the last few thousand years, and its ash fell across the sea in a layer several centimetres thick over a huge part of northern Japan. Researchers pinned the date down using a tree that the eruption killed and an ash layer in the ice of Greenland. Since a small eruption in 1903 the volcano has been quiet. Sources do not fully agree on its height: many give 2 744 metres, others 2 750 metres.
Find it on the globe
Paektu-san is there as a small peak with its own shape — a horn, a ridge, a volcano — standing on the surface. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
How high is Paektu-san?
About 2 744 metres, the highest point anywhere on the Korean peninsula. Some sources give 2 750 metres instead.
Where is Paektu-san?
In the far north-east of the Korean peninsula, on the border between North Korea and China, where it is called Changbaishan.
What is the Heaven Lake?
Chonji, the lake that fills the summit crater: twelve to fourteen kilometres around and up to 384 metres deep, which makes it one of the deepest crater lakes on Earth.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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