Goksan Beacon Station, Goseong

A beacon station (bongsudae) is a facility built on a high mountain peak for lighting signal fires. Beacon signalling (bongsu) was a military communication system that, in the past, used fire (bong) by night and smoke (su) by day to relay news of enemy invasions to the central government. Cheonwangjeom Beacon Station stands at the end of the main ridge of Mount Cheonwangsan (353 m above sea level), commanding a sweeping view of both the coast and the interior. The beacon routes of the Joseon period were organised around the Main Beacon Routes (jikbong), the principal lines linking the nationwide beacon network; between these, Branch Beacon Routes (ganbong) — smaller lines feeding into the main routes — were established out of concern that signals might otherwise fail to be relayed along the way. Cheonwangjeom Beacon Station was one such branch station, linking the areas between other beacon stations and relaying news from border outposts to individual villages. Of the five Main Beacon Routes, it belonged to Route 2, which ran from Dongnae in Gyeongsang Province through Gyeongsangbuk-do, Chungcheongbuk-do and Gyeonggi-do to the central beacon station; it connected southward to Usan Beacon Station in Tongyeong and eastward to Goksan Beacon Station, Goseong. The exact date when Cheonwangjeom Beacon Station was built is unknown, but documentary records suggest it was constructed before 1425. In 2005, an excavation by the Gyeongnam Institute of Archaeology revealed the station's structure. The station is enclosed by a protective wall (banghobyeok) in the shape of an elongated rectangle with rounded corners (malgakjangbanghyeong), inside which are smoke furnaces (yeonjo) where fires were lit. The wall measures 23 m along its longer side and 19 m along its shorter side, and the surviving wall now stands 3 m high. The area enclosed within the wall is 230 ㎡, with a stepped entrance at the centre of its southern section. On the flat ground inside are five smoke furnaces in total, circular or square/rectangular in plan. A wall, a ditch and a stone-pile feature were identified around the station, though their precise scale and nature have not been determined, and a vegetable patch — presumed to have been cultivated by the soldiers who guarded the station — was also found.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Goseong, Gyeongnam

Designation

Provincial Monument · 시도기념물