Historic Site of Anti-Japanese Army in Ssangsan Mountain, Hwasun

When the Righteous Army movement was at its height in the closing years of the Korean Empire, this was one of the strongholds of the Righteous Army movement in South Jeolla Province, centred on the area around Gyedangsan Mountain in Hwasun-gun, from which fighters resisted the Japanese army. The Gyedangsan area has long been called Ssangsan, Ssangbong or Ssangchi, and it is from this that the name Ssangsan Uiso, meaning the Ssangsan righteous-army headquarters, derives. In 1907 Yang Hoe-il, Im No-bok, Im Sang-yeong, An Chan-jae and others raised a righteous army at Ssangsan and then extended their activities across Neungju, Dongbok and Hwasun. The fighting led by Yi Baek-rae through the Honam Changuiso, the Righteous Army headquarters for the Honam region, and the campaign raised by An Gyu-hong's unit, were likewise part of the wider movement centred on the Ssangsan Uiso. At the Ssangsan Uiso, remains survive of a weapons workshop that supplied arms and ammunition, a cave used to store sulphur, and a Uibyeongseong, a defensive fortress built by the righteous army, showing that a large body of fighters was stationed here, making their own weapons to resist the Japanese army. At the weapons workshop, the walls of a furnace for smelting iron stand on a stone platform, with scraps of iron scattered around it; it is thought that iron ore was carried here from an iron mine about 4 km away, in Hwajeong-dong, Bongnae-myeon, Boseong-gun, and used to make weapons. The Uibyeongseong consists of stones about 80 cm high piled up in a long wall, within which lie the irregularly arranged remains of barracks marked out by low, round or square stone walls. The fortress and barracks remains show that this was the base of the Ssangsan righteous army. The Ssangsan Uiso is the site of a changuiso, a command post where righteous-army fighters of the late Korean Empire prepared to fight the Japanese police, and it is a cultural heritage site that shines not only in the history of the Honam righteous army but in the wider history of the righteous-army movement, providing valuable material for research into that history. The name was changed from Ssangsan Uiso to Historic Site of Anti-Japanese Army in Ssangsan Mountain, Hwasun, by notification on 28 July 2011.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Hwasun, Jeonnam & Gwangju

Designation

Historic Site · 사적