Yeonggwangjeong Pavilion

About this place

Yeonggwangjeong is a pavilion in Sunchang-gun, Jeollabuk-do, built during the Japanese colonial period. It is located beside the Giryongam Rock, on the bank of a stream along the road from Sisan-ri to Jungan Village in Ssangchi-myeon. It is a one-bay-front, one-bay-deep hip-and-gable tile-roofed structure. When the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty was signed in 1910, Kim Won-jung and seven like-minded colleagues living in the area deliberately feigned madness while secretly using this place as their base, frequently gathering to recruit voluntary armies and prepare materials for anti-Japanese activities. On June 27, 1921, they erected a pavilion at this gathering place for anti-Japanese resistance — the former site of their secret meetings — to honor the aspirations of the eight patriotic comrades, and carved the Eight Trigrams on the eaves of the building to express their sorrow at the loss of the nation, naming it 'Yeonggwangjeong.' During the Korean War of 1950, all buildings in Ssangchi-myeon were completely burned to the ground, yet this pavilion alone remained unburned. However, the 27 memorial plaques that had been on the building were lost. Sunchang-gun repaired the pavilion in 1975, and in 1991 the road expansion (Damyang-Jeongeup section) required dismantling and reconstructing the building, and it stands in its present form today.