Sinjaegong Sim Dong-ro Spirit-path Stele, Donghae

This stele is the spirit-path stele (sindobi, a memorial stele set up on the approach to a tomb recording the life of a meritorious official) of Sim Han, a civil official of the late Goryeo period known by the honorific Sinjaegong. When Sim Han resigned his official post in 1361, the tenth year of King Gongmin, and retired to Samcheok, King Gongmin bestowed on him the name 'Dongno' (東老), meaning 'an old man returns to the east', and he was later enfeoffed as Lord Jinju. The stele stands beside a street in Balhan-dong, Donghae, inside a stele pavilion that is surrounded on every side but the road by private houses. On the front of the stele is a seal-script title reading 'Spirit-path Stele Inscription of Lord Sim, styled Sinjae, Minister of Rites of Goryeo'; the front face records the ancestry and life of Lord Sinjae, the back records the composition of the inscription and the names of his descendants, while the sides bear no text. The inscription was composed by Yi Seong-bo, Inspector-General of the Office of the Inspector-General and Tutor-Companion to the Crown Prince; the calligraphy was written by Yi Seok-u, former Second Royal Secretary of the Royal Secretariat and Royal Lecturer and Drafter of Edicts; and the seal-script title was written by Yu Han-ji, Magistrate of Yeongchun County. The stele has a rectangular base (nongdae) and a capstone (gacheomseok), both of granite; the lower part of the base is buried in a cement-filled floor, so that only its upper surface can now be seen. The capstone is simply shaped to suggest a hipped-and-gabled (paljak) roof form. The stele body measures 248 cm in height, 98 cm in width and 15 cm in thickness; the capstone is 35 cm high and up to 125 cm wide; and the base, as presently visible, is 19 cm high, 145 cm wide and 58 cm thick. The pavilion protecting the stele has a gable roof with a frontage of one bay and a depth of one bay, its four pillars resting on dressed, round plinth stones. The front of the pavilion has a small entrance door with two tiers of wooden latticework above it, while the other three sides have solid walls below and latticework only in the upper section.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Donghae, Gangwon

Designation

Cultural Heritage Material · 문화유산자료