The temple built in 670 was first called Sinrim Temple. It was famous as one of the four renowned temples in Mt. Kumgang along with the Jangan, Singye and Yujom Temples.

The Phyohun Temple built in peculiar style at the approach to the Manphok Ravine, blended with natural beauty, shows well wooden architecture of Korea in the Middle Ages and aesthetic tastes of the Korean ancestors.

It originally consisted of 20 odd buildings, but now there remain only the Panyabo Hall, Ryongsan Hall, Myongbu Hall, Rungpha Pavilion, Osil Pavilion, Sansin Pavilion and some others. The Myongwol Hall, the main building of the temple, and the three-meter-high statue of a Buddhist saint, which had been between the Panyabo Hall and the Rungpha Pavilion were totally destroyed in a barbarous bombing by the U.S. imperialists during the Korean war.

The Phyohun Temple presents multifarious changes with the proper combination of hip-saddle roofed houses and gabled houses on the central north-south axis.

The Panyabo Hall is standing on a platform built with well-trimmed stones. It has four pillars each in front and on the side, but the intervals are not the same. The strokes of the decorations are bold to suit the scale of the grand building.

There had been many cultural relics in the temple. But an iron tower embossed with sculptures of 53 Buddhist images, a big brass steamer weighing 300 kilograms in which 40 mal (one mal equals 15 kilograms) of rice could be boiled at a time and others were taken away by the Japanese invaders.