Achasanseong Fortress

Achasan is the ridge on the north bank of the Han river at Seoul's eastern edge, and for two hundred years it was where three kingdoms met. Baekje built the fortress first, to watch the river crossing. In 475 Goguryeo came down from the north, took Baekje's capital across the river, and brought its captured king here to be beheaded. Baekje moved its capital south and never came back. Goguryeo held the ridge for the next seventy-five years and left a line of small stone forts along its crest — the best-preserved Goguryeo remains anywhere in South Korea. The legend of Ondal belongs to this hill: the low-born general who married a princess, and who died fighting to retake it from Silla in 590. His coffin, the story says, would not move until she came and spoke to it. The fortress is a kilometre of wall around the summit, part of it excavated and left open. The walk up from the subway takes forty minutes and the reward is the river, the whole of eastern Seoul, and on a clear day the mountains that the three armies watched each other from.

Original Text

Where it is

Region

Gwangjin-gu, Seoul

Designation

Historic Site · 사적