A Gram-negative, rod-shaped, deep yellow-pigmented bacterium, designated strain CS5-B1(T), was isolated from a soil sample collected from a cliff on Mara Island, south-west of Jeju, Republic of Korea. Comparative 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis showed that strain CS5-B1(T) fell within the radiation of the genus Chitinophaga with the closest relative being Chitinophaga japonensis IFO 16041(T) (97.2 % sequence similarity). Levels of 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity between strain CS5-B1(T) and other species of the genus Chitinophaga were 92.9-95.8 %. The dominant menaquinone was MK-7. The polar lipids contained phosphatidylethanolamine, a ninhydrin-positive lipid and an unknown lipid. The major fatty acids were iso-C(15 : 0), C(16 : 1)omega5c, C(16 : 0) and C(18 : 0), with iso-C(15 : 0) 3-OH and iso-C(17 : 0) 3-OH as the dominant hydroxy fatty acids. The G+C content of the DNA was 48.7 mol%. DNA-DNA relatedness between strain CS5-B1(T) and C. japonensis DSM 13484(T) was 5.8-7.9 %. On the basis of the phenotypic and DNA-DNA hybridization data, this bacterium represents a novel species of the genus Chitinophaga, for which the name Chitinophaga rupis sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is CS5-B1(T) (=KCTC 22170(T)=DSM 21039(T)).