Namdaemun (Kaesŏng)

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Namdaemun

Namdaemun ( Great South Gate ) is a city ​​gate in the city of Kaesŏng in North Korea . It is listed as number 124 on the List of National Treasures of North Korea and is part of the World Heritage Site of Historic Monuments and Sites of Kaesŏng .

location

The gate is located in the historic center of Kaesŏng in the Pug'an-dong district on a traffic island in a roundabout in the middle of an intersection at the end of Sungjon Street. When the gate was being built, a street in east-west direction and a street in north-south direction through the gate crossed outside the wall. The gate is roughly aligned in an east-west direction .

history

The structure was built in 1393 as the south gate of the inner wall built between 1391 and 1393. It was the largest of the other gates of the Inner Wall built around the same time and is the only one that has been almost completely preserved. After the fire of Yonbok Temple in 1563 next to the gate, a bell tower was built and the surviving bell housed the temple there. It struck the clock until the early 1900s.

During the Japanese rule in Korea , the walls adjacent to the gate and the bell house were demolished. The lower part of the gate was filled in for the construction of a road across it. The gate pavilion burned down in 1950 after a bombing by the United States Air Force in the Korean War and was reconstructed after the war from old photographs.

description

The gateway has a 4-meter-high, 25-meter-wide and 10-meter-deep stone plinth , through the center of which is an approximately 5-meter-wide and 3.30-meter-high arched gate. The base consists of finely hewn large granite blocks. On the east and west side ramps are attached to the base, via which stairs lead up to the platform formed by the base.

A single-story open gate pavilion stands on the platform. It has a footprint of around 14 × 8 meters and has an Irimoya roof. In total it is about 9 meters high. Three open fields form the long sides of the pavilion, two fields the transverse sides. The single-storey structure of the gate pavilion, which is much simpler compared to other Korean city gates such as the Namdaemun or the Dongdaemun in Seoul or the Pothong Gate or the Taedong Gate in Pyongyang , was designed according to the principles of geomancy , in particular Feng Shui , Yin and Yang and the five element theory . Accordingly, due to the special topography of Kaesŏng, the city was not allowed to have tall buildings because it is surrounded by high mountains. Two smaller covered pavilions stand on either side of the platform at the ends of the stairs.

The gate pavilion houses the 1346 bell of the Yonbok Temple , which weighs around 14 tons and is also one of the national treasures of North Korea.

literature

  • Democratic People's Republic of Korea (Ed.): NOMINATION of THE HISTORIC MONUMENTS AND SITES IN KAESONG for Inscription on the World Heritage List . 2013, p. 46-50, 133 f., 159–162 (English, whc.unesco.org [PDF; 18.9 MB ] nomination letter).

Web links

Commons : Nam Gate in Kaesong  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Decision: 37 COM 8B.30. In: whc.unesco.org. UNESCO World Heritage Center, 2013, accessed July 4, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b nomination p. 48
  3. ↑ a b nomination p. 133
  4. ↑ Nomination letter p. 49
  5. ↑ Nominations p. 134
  6. ↑ Nominations p. 159ff

Coordinates: 37 ° 58 '18.71 "  N , 126 ° 33' 23.19"  E