Tarubi Stele

This stele, standing beside a road at the foot of a mountain in Jangcheok Village, commemorates the loyalty of a tongin — a minor clerk attached to a local government office — who died following his magistrate in death. In 1678, the fourth year of King Sukjong of Joseon, Jo Jong-myeon, then magistrate of Jangsu, was out inspecting local conditions when he passed along a mountain path here. Startled by the loud sound of horses' hooves, a pheasant hiding in the woods cried out and flew up; this in turn startled the magistrate's horse, which missed its footing and fell from the cliff, killing both the horse and the magistrate. The tongin who had been following the magistrate witnessed this and, wailing that the magistrate's death was his own fault, bit his finger and used the blood to draw a picture of the pheasant and the horse on the cliff face, then wrote the two characters "taru" (墮淚, meaning "to shed tears"), before throwing himself off the cliff to his death. Long afterward, Choe Su-hyeong, who came to serve as magistrate of Jangsu, heard this story and, wishing to make widely known the loyal devotion of a man who died following his master, had a stele erected and named it "Tarubi" ("Stele of Shed Tears"), ordering that rites be performed for him. Housed within a stele pavilion, the stele has a simple structure with a stele body set on a base stone, its upper corners cut at an angle. It was erected in 1802, the second year of King Sunjo, but its base later broke and had to be repaired; as the repaired stele still looked unimpressive, local people came together in 1881 to erect the "Jangsu Sunuiribi" ("Stele of the Righteous and Loyal of Jangsu") beside it. This tongin, known only by his surname Baek, is honoured together with Nongae and Jeong Gyeong-son as one of the Three Exemplars of Fidelity of the Jangsu area. On the upper surface of a rock beside the stele pavilion is an inscription reading "Bulmangbi" ("Stele of Never Forgetting"), honouring Magistrate Jo Jong-myeon, who died on the same day, adding still deeper poignancy to the site.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Jangsu, Jeonbuk

Designation

Provincial Monument · 시도기념물