When the Gimyo Purge erupted in 1519, a scholar named Choe San-du, known by his pen name Sinjae, was exiled to the Dongbok region. Time spent in exile was, in most cases, a painful ordeal — yet upon encountering the breathtaking scenery here, Choe San-du felt something entirely different. He judged that this landscape rivaled the cliffs where the Chinese poet Su Dongpo had once gone boating and composed his famous "Ode to the Red Cliff," celebrating the beauty of nature, and so he gave this place the name "Jeokbyeok" — "Red Cliff."
Stretching roughly 7 kilometers along Changnangcheon, the upper reaches of the Dongbok Stream, this cliff face is geologically composed of Mesozoic Cretaceous tuff strata. That the aesthetic sensibility of a scholar who turned toward nature amid the political devastation of exile ended up giving this landscape the name it still carries today is itself a striking result. Hwasun Jeokbyeok is also well known as the place where the wandering poet Kim Sat-gat is said to have ended his life. It was designated South Jeolla Provincial Monument No. 60 in 1979, then elevated to Scenic Site No. 112 in 2017.