Among the national cultural heritage items created by the Korean ancestors are monuments inscribed with characters on well-trimmed stones for the purpose of recording certain events or facts to convey them to posterity. They include monuments to fortress.
A stone monument to fortress carries the records about the construction, repair and restoration of the fortress concerned and various structures in and around it.
From olden times, the Korean people who are strongly patriotic attached great importance to building fortresses across the country to repel foreign invasion. They inscribed the whole courses related with the fortresses on monuments to hand them down to the coming generations.
The records inscribed on the monuments are of substantial help to the study of the history of the Korean people’s struggle to defend the independence of their country and nation from foreign aggression. They serve as hard data for correctly explaining the Korean ancestors’ high architectural skills of building fortresses and the years and processes of their construction.
The monument was built in or near the fortress, but when the fortress was repaired several times, a monument was sometimes built separately.
One of the most typical monuments in the DPRK is found in Nyongbyon, North Phyongan Province.
The monument stands near the Chonju Temple on the hillside southeast of Yaksandongdae west of Chorong Fortress.
It was erected in 1684. Characters meaning chorongbi are inscribed on the upper part of the face, and below them comes the fact that the fortress was built and repaired several times.
According to the records, a legion of soldiers and civilians were mobilized to build and repair the fortress from 1416 to 1684. In addition, over 200 different cannons were made by casting molten iron, and the sound of gunfire went as far as 40 kilometres.
Similar monuments still remain in the country.
Kim Hyon
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