The Marmot’s Hole

Most of the links in this post are to Korean-language articles in the online Naver encyclopedia—albeit with pictures, which are intelligible in any language.  I’ll add links to English-language articles as I find them. 

Given the tragedy that recently beset Sungnyemun, this seems as good a time as any to clear up the incumbent confusion over the various city gates of Seoul and their current states.

When Yi Seong-gye chose Seoul to be the capital of Korea in the late 14th century, one of the first orders of business was building a wall to surround the new city.  The wall followed the natural geography of the place, running along the ridgeline of the four mountains that surround the upper Cheonggyecheon valley: Inwangsan to the northwest, Bugaksan (or Baegaksan) to the north, Naktasan (a.k.a. Naksan) to the northeast, and Namsan to the south.

 (Amazingly, after a century of intensified urban growth, most of the wall is still intact: only the sections running through the built-up areas northwest and northeast of Namsan have actually been removed.  The wall still stands in a semicircle from Sajik Tunnel in the northwest, along Inwangsan, Bugaksan, and Naktasan to just north of Dongdaemun in the east; and the section along Namsan still stands as well.)

Around the wall were built four “great gates” (Sadaemun; 四大門) and four “small gates” (Sasomun; 四小門), through which flowed residents, merchants, soldiers, visitors, and goods. A ninth gate, the Ogansumun, straddled the Cheonggyecheon, at the point where the restored stream now passes just south of Dongdaemun.

The four “great gates” include Heunginjimun (興仁之門) or Dongdaemun in the east, and originally called Heunginmun; the recently torched Sungnyemun (崇禮門) or Namdaemun in the south; Donuimun (敦義門) or Seodaemun in the west; and Sukjeongmun (肅靖門) in the north, originally called Sukcheongmun.

Heunginjimun and Sungnyemun need no introduction. These were the main gates for commerce into and out of the city, serving the adjacent Dongdaemun and Namdaemun markets respectively. Jongno-Saemunangil was the main east-west road in the old city, running between Dongdaemun and Seodaemun; at the intersection with Namdaemun-no, a belfry was constructed that sounded the market opening and closing times each day: Bosin-gak, which still stands today.

Donuimun (Seoadaemun) was torn down in 1915 as part of an urban renewal plan under the colonial government. It was located on Saemunan-gil, just west of Gyeonghuigung, at the intersection with Deoksugung-gil. A plaque is embedded in the sidewalk on the north side of Saemunan-gil today, marking the location of the gate. A couple of hundred meters southwest along Saemunan-gil is the Seodaemun intersection and subway station. From the location of the gate, it is possible to walk northwest along side streets until you cross over the Sajik tunnel; from there, the remnant of the Seoul wall begins, and you can walk along it via the Inwangsan Skyway, which Robert (Marmot-in-chief) wrote up a few months ago.

Not far from Seodaemun, a few hundred meters away from the city along Uijuro, stand Dongnimmun and the remnants of Yeongeunmun. These gates stand outside the city walls. Yeongeunmun was built in 1407, and was the gate at which officials received dignitaries visiting from China, who came by way of Uiju—adjacent to Sinuiju on the Amnok (Yalu) River, and the source of the street name “Uijuro.” When Korea stopped paying annual tributes to China in the 1890s, Dongnimmun (”Independence Gate”) was built to commemorate the event.

Although Sukjeongmun is nominally a “great gate,” it has never been a major gate into or out of the city, sitting as it does very near the top of Bugaksan. It was inaccessible for a number of years while Bugaksan was off-limits to visitors, after a failed North Korean raid on the Blue House in 1968. Restrictions were somewhat relaxed in 2006, and it is now possible to visit the gate, although reservations are required. (See this English-language KTO page for more information.) And as Robert mentioned on another thread a couple of days ago (here and here), the gate was often closed during the Joseon dynasty, for reasons pertaining to geomantic beliefs; for the same geomantic reasons, the gate was sometimes opened—and Namdaemun closed—during times of drought and flooding.

The four “small gates” include Hyehwamun (惠化門) or Dongsomun in the northeast, originally called Honghwamun; Gwanghuimun (光熙門) in the southeast; Souimun (昭義門) or Soseomun in the southwest, originally called Sodeongmun (Sodeok-mun); and Changuimun (彰義門) in the northwest.

Hyehwamun is situated along Daehangno between Hyehwa and Hanseong University subway stations. The gate was torn down in 1928 along with a section of the city wall, but the wall was restored between 1975 and 1980, and the gate was rebuilt, reopening in 1992. Gwanghuimun is located along Euljiro 7-ga, and Souimun (which was torn down in 1914, around the same time as Seodaemun) was located about a hundred metres east of Uijuro, along the road that runs southwest from Deoksugung to Seosomun Park. During the Joseon dynasty, these two gates in the southeast and southwest—Gwanghuimun and Souimun respectively—were the only two gates allowed to be used for transporting corpses out of the city.

Finally, Changuimun is located in the far northwest, along Jahamun-gil (Jahamun being another name for the gate), in the pass between Bugaksan and Inwangsan, north of the Blue House. Like Sukjeongmun, the gate has been frozen in time, far removed from the urban sprawl in the plain below. Unlike Sukjeongmun, the gate is along a main road and therefore relatively accessible; Robert discussed it in the aforementioned piece he wrote on the Inwangsan Skyway.

Although Seoul has grown greatly since it was little more than a gleam in the eye of geomantically inspired Confucian officials, the remnants of the old city wall and its gates still define the old Downtown of Seoul: an area of office towers, palaces, and sprawling markets, defined by the natural boundaries that caused it to become the capital of Korea in the first place. Gangnam may be a centre of commerce and Yeouido may be where laws are passed and TV studios churn out the latest soap operas, but the city within the walls is still arguably the social, economic, and cultural engine of the country, just as it has been for the last six centuries. And traffic may now pass around the gates rather than through them, soldiers no longer standing sentry over the comings and goings of the city; but most of the gates still stand, tangible markers of time and space in an otherwise sprawling cityscape that now stretches all the way to Suwon and Incheon in one unbroken mass of highways and highrises.