It is an inhabited island located near the Northern Limit Line, and is closer to North Korea than it is to the South.

[1] The island is a popular tourist attraction, and has three Natural Monuments of South Korea.

The site has long been considered beautiful and scenic, with a 1612 record describing it as seeming like it was carved by the gods.

At low tide, the exposed surface is considered to have such fine-grained sand with sufficient firmness to serve as a natural runway.

The area hosts a nature reserve for spotted seals,[7] and they can be observed on the rocks and beaches.

[19] In April 1951 Paengyong-do was used as a staging base for a mission to recover wreckage of a downed Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 near the Chongchon River.

On 17 April 1951 a USAF Sikorsky H-19 carried a US/South Korean team to the crash site and they photographed the wreck and removed the turbine blades, combustion chamber, exhaust pipe and horizontal stabilizer.

The overloaded helicopter then flew the team and samples back to Paengyong-do where they were transferred onto an SA-16 and flown south for evaluation.

[21] In December 1951 two Sikorsky H-5s of the USAF 3d Air Rescue Squadron were based on the island and would forward deploy daily to Chodo Airport to operate search and rescue missions before being permanently deployed to Chodo in January 1952.

[22] On 12 November 1952 several aircraft, believed to be Po-2s, bombed the base in a night attack causing minimal damage.

[24][25] The South Korean naval vessel ROKS Cheonan sank near the island on 26 March 2010.

A multinational investigation concluded that a North Korean torpedo struck the ship[26] although this conclusion has been challenged by others.

Owing to the geographical location, Christianity went through Baengnyeong Island ahead of other Korean regions.

After the Gabo Reform, Kim Seong-jin was exiled to this island, and the first church in Korea was established in 1896.