Hoguksa Stele of Jeoksangsanseong Fortress

The Hoguksa Stele, standing beneath the south retaining wall within the grounds of Anguksa Temple inside Jeoksangsanseong Fortress, records the circumstances behind the founding of Hoguksa Temple in 1645. In 1643, the twenty-first year of King Injo, Yi Sik, who held the posts of Minister of Personnel and Daejehak (chief academician), inspected the sago, a royal archive housing the state's historical records, on royal command, and reported to the king that, after the disorder caused by the Jeongchuk War (the second Manchu invasion of 1636–1637), the management of the archive and the defence of the fortress had fallen into disrepair and needed to be thoroughly reinforced; this led to the founding of the temple. The full text of the inscription is also recorded in the section on historic sites of the Jeokseongji (Gazetteer of Jeokseong), published in 1898, the thirty-fifth year of Emperor Gojong. The stele is made of marble, inscribed on two faces, and stands 1.78m tall overall. Its rectangular base is carved on all four sides with an eye-shaped niche pattern (ansang), decorated at the sides with cloud motifs and, at the centre, with four protruding ruyi-head motifs (yeouidumun); the top surface is carved with a lotus-petal (bogyeon) pattern. The base is 27cm high, 82cm wide across the front and 47cm wide on the sides. The body of the stele set on the base bears, at the top, a title inscribed in seal script reading "Hoguksa Stele of Jeoksangsanseong Fortress," with the main text carved below; the body measures 1m in height, 59cm in width and 17cm in thickness. On the reverse is carved the inscription "erected in the tenth month of the second year of Sunchi [1645]." The capstone (isu) set above the body is carved on all four sides with a coiling dragon (banryong); it measures 51cm in height, 82cm in width and 37cm in thickness. The inscription contains records relating to Jeoksangsanseong Fortress, the establishment of the archive site, the laxity of its defences, and the circumstances of the founding of Hoguksa Temple. In particular, it records that the cost of founding the temple was met from the salary of the Governor of Jeolla Province, that a monk commander (seungjang) oversaw the labour, and that the magistrate of Muju County was responsible for the procurement and supervision of materials. Hoguksa Temple was originally built as lodgings for the monk soldiers who guarded the sago within Jeoksangsanseong Fortress, and served as a place dedicated to protecting the nation by preserving the state's historical records until the archive was abolished after Korea's forced annexation by Japan in 1910; the temple later suffered the misfortune of being destroyed by fire amid the fighting of the Yeosu–Suncheon Incident in 1949.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Muju, Jeonbuk

Designation

Provincial Tangible Heritage · 시도유형문화유산