Gyeryongsan Mountain Three Bodies Hall

The site on which the Samsindang hall stands is said to be an auspicious place where King Taejo, Yi Seong-gye, prayed for a hundred days before founding Joseon and ascending the throne; it was known as Wangyongam in the Silla period, as Susimdae in the Goryeo period, and as Samsindang in the Joseon period. Jeong Won-gang, born in Pyeongyang in 1889, came to Gyeryongsan Mountain in 1910 at the age of twenty-one to pursue a life of ascetic practice. He stayed at Baek Ok-seong's hermitage, married Baek Ok-seong's daughter, and over the following years reorganised the Samsindang precinct, successively building Cheondan (Heaven Altar), Jeongsimwon and Taesangjeon, Sansin-gak (a shrine to the mountain spirit), Chilseong-gak (a shrine to the Seven Stars) and Yonggung (Dragon Palace). While travelling to Samgaksan Mountain in Seoul to pray, he formed ties with independence activists, and the hall came to be used both for prayers for the nation's independence and as a hiding place for independence fighters. Around June 1943 Jeong Won-gang was arrested by the Japanese colonial police, brutally tortured at Sangju Police Station in North Gyeongsang, and died while being taken under escort to Seoul. His eldest son Jeong Un-bok succeeded him, but amid forced conscription under Japanese rule and then the Korean War, it was Jeong's wife Park Yeong-suk who took over the hall's management; in April 1984, leaving the buildings of the Samsindang precinct standing in place, she moved to Jangan-dong, Seo-gu, Daejeon, where she rebuilt the Samsindang hall exactly as it had stood. Located near Amyongchu pond within Gyeryongdae, the Armed Forces Headquarters, the Gyeryongsan Samsindang is the site where Jeong Won-gang established the hall in 1925 and carried out his independence activities. When a government project in 1983 (the so-called '6-20 Project') cleared away all shamanist and new-religion facilities in the area, this hall alone was left standing in order to protect its historical character and the surrounding landscape. As a symbolic site preserving the religious, local and historical character of Sindoan, long a cradle of shamanist and new religious movements, it holds great value for preservation from both a historical and a folkloric standpoint.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Gyeryong, Chungnam

Designation

Provincial Folklore Heritage · 시도민속문화유산