More Feasting Than Fighting, Hwaseong's North-east Pavilion

Here's another section of Hwaseong in Suwon built by King Jeongjo. The north-east pavilion, Dongbuk Gangnu, is perched  prettily on a hillock overlooking a pond named Yongyeon. Given the panoramic views which it commands, it's been more popular as a venue for picnics and feasting than as its intended purpose as a command post.

The graceful outlines of the pavilion seem even more elegant in this drawing featured in an uigwe detailing the construction of Hwaseong. Thanks to Henny Savenije for letting me reproduce this picture.

Beauty inspires many names. The north-east pavilion is also known as "gaknu" or "angle tower" as well as Banghwasuryujeong.

The view from this pavilion, may be regarded as one of the eight famous views of Suwon but the view OF this pavilion is quite impressive as well. If I had had more time in Suwon, I'd have packed a picnic basket and spent at least an hour there.  

Sources:
http://www.hwasong.henny-savenije.pe.kr/
http://www.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/SI/SI_EN_3_6.jsp?cid=255802
http://www.ekoreajournal.net/upload/pdf/PDF4118
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hwaseong_Third_North_Secret_Gate_and_Dongbuk_Gangnu_-_2009-03-01.JPG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hwasgph2.jpg
http://eng.suwon.ne.kr/sub/travel_tour/travel_tour_01_01.asp?menuCode=0401
http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2009/04/19/2009041900418.html

Janganmun at Hwaseong, Past and Present

Exterior view of Jangan-mun, the North Gate of Hwaseong

Many thanks to Henny Savenjie for giving me the green light to reproduce the first and second pictures here. They  came from a book  but he wasn't able as yet to find the publication details. To see bigger pictures in more detail, please click here.

Imagine, if you please, King Jeongjo making his grand entrance through Jangan-mun into Hwaseong from Hanyang.

According to one source, the word "jangan" means a capital, illustrating King Jeongjo’s intention to make Hwaseong a major city. But I'm puzzled - my very limited knowledge of Chinese suggests to me another translation -"Chang" meaning Long and  "An" meaning Peace, so could it be read as the Gate of Lasting Peace? Those who are familiar with Hanja, Chinese and Korean, please enlighten me.

I like this photo of Jangan-mun taken in the early 1910s. With its two-storeyed pavilion, Jangan-mun is the biggest of all the main gates in Hwaseong and is even larger than the unfortunate Sungnyemun ( Namdaemun ) in Seoul which was burnt a few years ago.

From another source, "water could be poured through five holes called oseongji on the upper side of ongseong (jar fortress- a semicircular outer gate) in case enemies tried to burn the gate." Remarkably this gate is the original one which survived many conflicts through the ages.

If you have the inclination and patience, you could check out this website with a blueprint and instructions  for constructing your own paper model of Jangan-mun. Good luck to you!

sources:
http://www.hwasong.henny-savenije.pe.kr/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2009-01-24_-_Portrait_of_King_Jeongjo_in_Unhangak.JPG
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hwaseong.Fortress-Janganmun.03.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Janganmun_of_Hwaseong_Fortress_in_early_1910s.jpg
http://shfes-eng.suwon.ne.kr/html/sub3_2_225.asp
http://cp.c-ij.com/en/contents/3152/hwaseong/index.html
http://english.visitseoul.net/visit2007en/activities/dattoursuggestions/dattoursuggestions.jsp?cid=38&sid=1911

http://magazine.seoulselection.com/index.php/articles/60-travel/211-hwaseong-fortress
http://www.knto.or.kr/enu/SI/SI_EN_3_1_1_1.jsp?cid=264391&nearBy=tran

Reconstructing Hwaseong With Uigwe

Learnt a new Korean word and got sidetracked. Meant to write more about Hwaseong but when I heard about Uigwe, started to read up on them and learnt a few more interesting things along the way. It was a paragraph written by Professor Han Young-woo which started the ball rolling:

“In 1997, when UNESCO added Suwon’s Hwaseong Fortress to its World Heritage list, it was not only Hwaseong’s architecture that impressed the evaluation committee members. The Hwaseong Fortress, built at the end of the 18th century to fulfil the dream of King Jeongjo (1776 – 1800), is of course a beautiful and valuable cultural asset; however, the 1500-page Hwaseong Seongyeok Uigwe, a detailed account of the construction process, amazed the evaluators even more. This is because Russia’s St.Petersburg and the US capital of Washington, D.C., also developed at the end of the 18th century, do not have such detailed construction records.”

Uigwe is the term given to written and illustrated records of royal protocols first produced when the Joseon Dynasty was founded in 1392. The work of compiling the records was maintained up to the end of the dynasty in 1910. Professor Han concludes: “….those who have seen uigwe can only seriously reflect upon how greatly we fail to appreciate the Joseon Dynasty’s level of governance and culture of recordkeeping, and just how superficial today’s recordkeeping culture really is. We need to acknowledge that the secret to the Joseon Dynasty’s lengthy existence of 518 years was  undoubtedly related to its incomparable recordkeeping.”

Each time the royal house of Joseon had a marriage banquet, funeral, national ceremony or rites for the military or the envoys, a Dogam (都監), an ad hoc committee would be formed to direct the event. After the major ceremony was over, the Dogam became a Uigwecheong to put together all the relevant information regarding the event so that future Dogams could refer to the manual as a model to ensure continuity of important rites. “These records were written exclusively in Chinese characters, but combined both literary Chinese and the unique Korean writing system called idu, in which Chinese characters were borrowed to record the sound or meaning of Korean words.”

To appreciate the value of the uigwe, consider the example of Hwaseong Seongyeok Uigwe, the Archives of the Construction of Hwasong Fortress which is now stored in Kyujangha ( the Cultural Library of Seoul National University). It provides details about the process of construction of Hwaseong such as:

• the elevation plans of the fortress
•  explanations of the dimensions of the building
• illustrations of different machines used in the construction
•  materials and costs to build the machines as well as the fortress itself
•  the locations of the tiles and bricks produced and their costs
• a record of the building materials which were left over
•  daily records of wages paid to the construction workers AND
• a list of ALL the artisans involved, from stonemasons to plasterers to roofers including their names, addresses and days they each worked.

No wonder then that these records played a vital part when a reconstruction project of Hwaseong Fortress was undertaken in the last century.

Sources:

http://asiaenglish.visitkorea.or.kr/ena/SI/SI_EN_3_1_1_1.jsp?cid=762951
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/art/2010/01/148_15229.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uigwe
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/archives_of_asian_art/v058/58.yi.html
http://asiaenglish.visitkorea.or.kr/ena/CU/CU_EN_8_4_5_5.jsp
http://www.museum-security.org/?p=3705
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2898272 map of K treasures held by other countries
http://www.koreabrand.net/en/now/now_view.do?CATE_CD=0028&SEQ=533
http://www.eapubc.net/books/?mode=recommendation&id=96&PHPSESSID=90fe67ad982a835f22c9e0dfdeef2110
http://www.vuw.ac.nz/~caplabtb/dprk/Korea_Report0708.doc
http://www.worldhistoryblog.com/2004/06/hwasong-fortress-in-suwon.html
http://www.hwasong.henny-savenije.pe.kr/

Hwaseong,Suwon - A Fortress For A Father

Wish I had read Bruce Cumings' "Korea's Place in the Sun - A Modern History" before I visited Suwon. I would have appreciated Hwaseong fortress a lot more if I had a fuller picture of the sad Prince Sado then. As it was, it was a rushed visit to Suwon, coming at the tail end of my 2005 autumn tour. I'd taken the inter-city bus from Yongdae-ri into the city after spending a few peaceful days in Baekdamsa. Not exactly a wise move as the contrast between the idyllic setting in Soraksan National Park and the busy urban landscape was too jarring. Then it was a quick tour of the Korean Cultural Village just outside of Suwon before making the all-too-hasty decision to cover only the western half of the fortress wall as I was pressed for time.

Told myself that I'd complete the circuit in another visit. Ha - how optimistic I was. Now I have to be content to be an armchair traveller to revisit Hwaseong. Fortunately, there're a few interesting websites that I hope to explore more fully in the days to come. Plus, am re-reading the section from Cuming's book which describes how Prince Sado was forced to kill himself after his scandalous behaviour and how Hwaseong Fortress was eventually built by his son, Jeongjo, in memory of his late father.

Of course, the fortress isn't simply an elaborate shrine to commemorate one's parent. It was designed to repel invasions by the Japanese but it was also intended as an alternative capital. King Jeongjo evidently had a bone to pick with Seoul in more ways than one.

source:
http://asiaenglish.visitkorea.or.kr/ena/CU/CU_EN_10_4_3_1.jsp