These mountains are famous because from a distance they look just like a set of horse ears. Their name in Korean, "Ma'Yi'San" means literaly "Horse Ear Mountains." The main temple, TapSa (Pagoda Temple), was build by a twentieth centurey Buddhist mystic,Yi Kap, who spent the last forty years of his life pilling his own style of pagodas around his temple at the bottom of the cliff.

There are about eighty pagodas, some up to fifteen meters tall, totaly free standing, no cement or any other kind of support what so ever. I was told, by a very interesting Korean man I met, that on a windy day some actualy sway but don't fall. The piles of stone around the temple feel like something you'd see in a Fragle Rock episode, or at least some Jim Henson creation. The two biggest pagodas, rising high behind the main building and share the same foundation of pilled rock are meant to represent Heaven and Earth and sort of feel like relics of ancient beings who once sat in esoteric rumination.