Wolsandae Pavilion Group Ijeong Placenta Chamber

The taesil (placenta chamber) of Yi Jeong, Prince Wolsan, stands at the summit of Taebongsan Mountain, at 291-1 Umyeon-dong, Seocho-gu, Seoul. A taesil is a site where, following a birth in the royal family, the placenta of the royal child was enshrined and a marker stone erected; it is also called taebong. In the Joseon period, a temporary office called the Taesil Dogam (Placenta Chamber Directorate) was set up to handle this task. Yi Jeong, Prince Wolsan (1454–1488), whose courtesy name was Jami and pen name Punggwoljeong, was the eldest son of King Deokjong and the elder brother of King Seongjong. Having lost his father at an early age, Prince Wolsan grew up in the palace under the affection of his grandfather, King Sejo. At the age of seven, in 1460 (the sixth year of King Sejo), he was invested as Lord Wolsan, and in 1468 (the year King Yejong took the throne) he was appointed, together with his younger brother Lord Jalsan (the future King Seongjong), to the rank of Hyeollok-daebu. In 1471 (the second year of King Seongjong) he was elevated to Prince Wolsan, and in the third month of that year he was named a second-class Jwari Merit Subject and granted land and slaves. He later rebuilt Huiujeong Pavilion, which stood on the scenic northern bank of the Yanghwa crossing at Seoho on the Han River, renaming it Mangwonjeong; there he kept a library of books and led a life of refined leisure, composing poetry. Before the court posthumously honoured King Deokjong and enshrined his spirit tablet at Jongmyo Shrine in 1473, Prince Wolsan had built a separate shrine and performed the ancestral rites himself, fulfilling his duty as Deokjong's eldest son. He later devotedly nursed his mother, Queen Insu, consort of King Deokjong, through her illness, but himself fell ill and died at the age of thirty-five, leaving behind two sons. From an early age he loved learning, studying at the Jonghak, the school for members of the royal clan, and became widely read in the classics, histories, philosophy and literary collections. He was calm and upright by nature, fond of wine and of mountains and rivers, and is said to have written much graceful, finely metred prose and poetry; his literary skill was such that several of his works were included in the Sok Dongmunseon, a sequel anthology of Korean literary writing. His collected works survive as the Punggwoljeongjip, and King Seongjong personally bestowed on him the posthumous title Hyomun. The taesil where Prince Wolsan's placenta was buried and kept today retains one placenta stele (taebi) and one stone chamber (seokham). The taebi is, overall, of gyusu-bangbu form — a stele with a rounded, tablet-shaped top and a square base — its body and base carved from a single stone. The front of the stele is inscribed "Wolsan-gun Jeong Taesil" ("Placenta Chamber of Lord Wolsan, [Yi] Jeong"), and the back is inscribed "erected on the eighteenth day of the fifth month of the sixth year of Cheonsun," showing that the stele was made in 1462, two years after Prince Wolsan was invested as Lord Wolsan in 1460. The upper part of the stone chamber is exposed above ground; originally it would have contained the placenta jar and a memorial stone tablet enshrined inside it, but these are now held in the Ataka Collection in Japan, and the date on which they left Korea is unknown. This taesil, where the placenta of Prince Wolsan Yi Jeong — King Seongjong's elder brother, widely known as a poet — was buried, is, although its placenta jar and memorial stone were looted and no longer remain, the only taesil in present-day Seoul preserved in its original form at its original location, and it offers important evidence of the Joseon royal court's antae rites, by which the placenta was regarded as sacred and carefully enshrined at a chosen auspicious site. Furthermore, the whole of Taebongsan Mountain, some 15,249.9 square metres, believed to have been a geumpyo zone where farming, the gathering of firewood, and the picking of medicinal herbs and wild greens by local people were strictly forbidden in order to protect the taesil, has been designated a heritage protection zone, with the aim of preserving the historical and cultural environment surrounding the site.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Seocho-gu, Seoul

Designation

Provincial Monument · 시도기념물