Hongseong Hongju-eupseong

About this place

This is a fortress in Hongseong-gun, Chungcheongnam-do; of its walls of about 1,772 m in length, part of the stone-built wall about 800 m long remains. The date of its first construction is not clearly known; the Sejong Sillok Jiriji (Geographical Appendix to the Annals of King Sejong) merely records the circumference of Hongjuseong and that there was one spring that did not dry up even in summer or winter. It was first begun in the reign of King Sejong of Joseon, when the town walls of districts anticipating invasion by Japanese pirates were being built to a new standard, and it was rebuilt anew in the 1st year of King Munjong (1451). At that time the fortress reportedly had a circumference of 4,856 cheok (about 1.5 km) and a height of 11 cheok (about 3.3 m), with four gates, various facilities such as parapets and corner platforms, and two wells inside. The east gate, Joyangmun, survives to this day and was restored in 1975. The government office gate (amun) was erected together with the gate tower of Joyangmun, and the inscription 'Hongju Amun' was written by Heungseon Daewongun himself, though it no longer survives. It is the largest and most unusual in form among the government office gates of Korea and serves as material for examining the structure and form of Joseon-era government offices. Anhoedang is the dongheon (magistrate's office) of Hongju-mok, a wooden tiled building of 22 kan. It was the government office building where successive Hongju magistrates and county heads conducted administration and is now located in the rear garden of the county office. Yeohajeong is a hexagonal wooden tile-roofed waterside pavilion, now located in the rear garden of the county office adjacent to the back yard of Anhoedang. In 1905, Min Jong-sik and others, who raised a righteous army in opposition to the conclusion of the Eulsa Treaty, attacked the Japanese troops stationed at this fortress and repelled them to Deoksan. This place continued as a town fortress from the Three Kingdoms period through the Joseon period, and it is valuable in that a fortress built according to a new style in the early Joseon period remains.