Gangneung Goryeoseong Fortress

Goryeoseong Fortress is a single stone wall encircling the summit and ridge of Gwaebangsan Mountain (384m above sea level), which overlooks the East Sea. Geographically it is a coastal fortress, built by the people of the Gangneung region to defend against invaders and raiders coming from the sea. The total length of the wall is 451m; the sections that survive today stand 2-3.5m high, with the best-preserved section of inner wall reaching about 2m. The remaining wall runs for about 25m on the west side and about 55m on the south side. The wall was built using irregular, roughly rectangular stones readily available from the surrounding hills, with small stones packed into some of the gaps between the larger stones to keep the wall from collapsing. The outer face was built by dressing the joining surfaces of fieldstones and laying them in irregular courses, while the inner side used the naetak method, backing the wall with rubble and packed earth. Two gate sites were built, one each at the north end of the west wall and the east wall; north of the west gate site a chi - a bastion projecting from the wall for observation and defence - was constructed, and at the north-east corner the wall appears to have been built outward to form a chiseong, a similar projecting bastion. Pottery sherds thought to date from the Goryeo and Joseon periods have been recovered from the fortress, along with fragments of celadon, buncheong ware and white porcelain, and roof-tile fragments bearing fish-bone, lattice, diagonal-lattice, straight-line, diagonal-line and combined patterns. The fortress does not appear in old records, but its name - Goryeoseong, meaning "Goryeo fortress" - together with its construction technique and the artefacts recovered from it, suggests that it was built in the early Goryeo period. Traces of repair visible on parts of the wall, however, indicate that it continued to be maintained into the Joseon period. Together with the nearby Samhansanseong Fortress, this fortress provides valuable material for the study of fortress-building in the Yeongdong region of Gangwon-do during the Three Kingdoms period and the early Goryeo period.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Gangneung, Gangwon

Designation

Provincial Monument · 시도기념물