Namwon Eupseong (Town Fortress)

About this place

An eupseong (town fortress) is a walled fortification that served both military and administrative functions while protecting the residents of a county or district. In the reign of King Sinmun of Silla (r. 681-692), regional administrative restructuring led to the establishment of a sogyeong (local urban center) in the Namwon area, and a square flat-land eupseong was built here in 691 CE. In 1597, the walls were extensively rebuilt and heightened in preparation for a Japanese invasion. That August, a battle was fought between the allied forces of Joseon and Ming China against the Japanese army; the allied forces suffered a decisive defeat. The tomb of the soldiers and residents who died fighting in this battle is called 'Manin-chong' (the tomb of ten thousand people). In 1894, during the Donghak Peasant War, much of the wall was destroyed and only traces of the fortress foundation remain. The stone embankment stretches more than 2.4 km in length and stands approximately 4 meters in height; inside the fortress there were some 70 wells. Straight roads ran north-south and east-west through the fortress, with narrower roads intersecting between them in a grid-like pattern. In modern times, as the city developed, most of the fortress walls were demolished, but the road layout in the town center still follows the original grid pattern, preserving a trace of the ancient street configuration. The eupseong represents the most typical structure of a Joseon-period town fortress, with a notably large scale and an almost perfectly square layout rarely seen in Korean fortresses.