My latest article for the Korea Times looks at the quarries and historical sites – and the views to be had from them – on hills like Dongmangbong, east and north of Dongdaemun. The area is perhaps best known for its association with Queen Jeongsun, the wife of the teenage King Danjong, whose tragic overthrow, exile, and execution have attracted renewed attention following the success of the film The King's Warden earlier this year.
Dongmangbong (‘east gazing peak’) was named for the legend that Jeongsun had climbed there to look east toward her exiled husband while living at a nearby Buddhist nunnery. Over the centuries, a shrine there dedicated to the local mountain spirit also came to be associated with the veneration of the queen. Sites associated with King Yeongjo’s visit in 1771 and a museum devoted to the queen are draws for today’s visitors, though they make little mention of modern scholarship suggesting that these stories may be myths that developed from the merging of different traditions.
Beyond this are a cave, an ‘exiled’ Joseon-era government building moved to the bottom of a valley almost a century ago, cafés perched high above the city, a village clinging to a steep hillside, and a surviving cluster of hanoks dating from the area’s urbanization in the late 1930s. I’ll be leading a walk to all of these places for RAS Korea this weekend.
(I should note that most of the sites for this walk and the general route were inspired by this video by Bart van Genugten.)
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