Geumgokdongjecheol Site

This site is associated with General Kim Deok-ryeong, a righteous army commander during the Imjin War (the Japanese invasions of Korea, 1592–1598), and is where weapons were made. It sits on a relatively gently sloping, flat spot along the ridge running north-west from the summit of Mudeungsan Mountain, and is also known as "Jugeomdong" ("sword-casting village"). The site was built with stone walls in two tiers, upper and lower, with a steep slope created to dispose of ironworking waste, and was laid out with the basic processes and facilities needed for iron production, from smelting through to forging (the process of extracting metal from ore and hammering it into shape). The smelting furnace was built rectangular in plan using small flat stones and broken stone, its interior packed with clay and other material. In the refining furnace, which reheated iron produced by the smelting furnace to remove impurities, the flat stone at the centre of the floor has cracked from the heat. Eight metres east of the smelting furnace stand a forging furnace and a forging anvil stone, used to make forged ironware (ironware made by hammering). The forging furnace is badly damaged and its shape altered, but appears to have been oval or rectangular. The forging anvil stone is a facility where iron blooms, already cleared of impurities, were worked into forged ironware. A large anvil stone used to remove impurities from the iron blooms produced by the smelting and refining furnaces was also identified, along with ironworking relics such as iron pieces, forging flakes, iron arrowheads, semi-finished iron arrowheads and weight-shaped ironware, as well as other artefacts such as buncheong ware and earthenware. The relics recovered suggest the site was in use during the 15th and 16th centuries of the Joseon period.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Buk-gu, Jeonnam & Gwangju

Designation

Provincial Monument · 시도기념물