Seogwijinji Site

Seogwijin was one of the Ten Scenic Spots of Tamna (the old name for Jeju), and a representative Joseon-period defensive site of Jeju, belonging to the system of "Three Fortresses and Nine Garrisons" and under the jurisdiction of Jeongui-hyeon. The earliest record of Seogwijin appears in the Veritable Records of King Sejong the Great (4 February 1439), which notes: "As the Seogwi defence post has no wall, a request was made to build one, and it was granted" — from which the first construction is judged to date to around 1439. The Sinjeung Dongguk yeoji seungnam (1530) records that Seogwiseong was built of stone, with a circumference of 161 cheok (48 m) and a height of 5 cheok (1.5 m). Seogwijin originally stood on the Hongno Stream, but in 1590, the twenty-third year of King Seonjo, Magistrate Yi Ok moved it to its present location and rebuilt it. It is said to have been a garrison fortress 251 m in circumference and 3.6 m high. Until the period of Japan's annexation of Korea in the 1920s, three tile-roofed buildings and the fortress wall remained, and at the time it was used as a Japanese military office. When the Jeju April 3rd Incident broke out, its wall was demolished and the stone reused to build defences for the village; it was afterwards further damaged indiscriminately for use in housing and as field boundary walls. Today only fragments of the former fortress wall survive, known locally as the "ujatdam" and "seonggupdam." Detailed records of Seogwijin survive in a 1695 painting, one of the Ten Scenic Spots of Tamna by Jeju Magistrate Yi Ik-tae, titled "Seogwiso," which depicts the scale of Seogwijin at that time in detail. Seogwijin, one of the Three Fortresses and Nine Garrisons that formed Jeju's defensive network in the Joseon period, holds great historical and cultural value.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Seogwipo, Jeju

Designation

Provincial Monument · 시도기념물