Walking in the footsteps of the past: Namhansanseong in 1884 (part one)

The view of Namhansanseong in the early 20th century. Courtesy of Hyunuk Park

By Robert Neff

Frandin's photograph of the South Gate from a signboard at the gate, May 2020. Robert Neff Collection

In the fall of 1884, George C. Foulk, a naval officer attached to the American legation in Seoul, undertook an arduous tour of the region surrounding Seoul. One of the last places on his tour was the mountain fortress known as Namhansanseong. This fortress was built in the 1620s to serve as an emergency palace and administration center in the event Seoul was threatened or captured.

As a military officer, he was naturally interested in the fortress, but ― somewhat surprisingly ― knew very little about it and did not spend much time exploring it. In his notes he wrote:

"[It is] a great fortress ― a hollow walled recess in the top of a bald mountain 1,200 feet high, containing a palace retreat for the King, barracks, storehouses and other necessaries for resisting a siege and maintaining it in such a condition. The wall inclines at a small angle and built solidly of massive stones, is forty feet high and shaped like a rough triangle lying on the mountain crest, which is broken at one place to admit a stream in a deep rocky gorge, heavily walled across at the meeting of its south and east sides. On the west at one place, 150 feet below the wall top a ridge runs out into the plain by which we had come, on top of this is the one road leading to the city from Seoul."

The South Gate with the 380-year-old Zelkova tree in front of it, May 2020. Robert Neff Collection

In his diaries and notes, Foulk usually described buildings and fortifications in great detail but when he entered through the South Gate his descriptions are rather lacking. He noted that on the ridges were "built heavy redoubt bastions entered by massive ports under the main wall. The steep sides of the mountain alone form with the cup-shaped hollow on its top a powerful natural fortress, and with its great wall and a handful of defenders in addition to [those from nearby Gwangju was] impregnable against almost any enemy."

A visit to the South Gate now makes it even more aggravating as it is perhaps the most beautiful of the main gates of this fortification. A path winds up to the picturesque gate past huge trees and lush grass. According to a signboard, the large 380-year-old Zelkova tree in front of the gate may have been planted in an attempt to camouflage the entrance from the enemy's view.

Perhaps Foulk had become jaded from all the previous places he had visited or maybe he was just tired. More than likely, it was because the gate wasn't so picturesque in the past. A picture taken by the Hippolyte Frandin (the French Consul) in the early 1890s shows the gate to be rather plain in design.

Through the gate, May 2020. Robert Neff Collection

Once through the gate, Foulk's description is somewhat more poetic:

"The interior of the wall is a beautiful wooded valley winding southeastward with rounded slopes densely covered with evergreen pines and maple undergrowth meeting the wall only five feet from its top in a broad grassy path of even width."

After a very short trek, he arrived "at the so-called [emergency capital] city, a peaceful, most picturesque hamlet of low thatched huts assembled in front of the Palace and yongmun buildings, which are half buried in pine forest under the west wall."

Today it is no longer so peaceful or picturesque. The small village is filled with restaurants and gift shops and thronged ― even in this age of COVID 19 ― with tourists and hikers. Like Foulk, many stop by and give the emergency palace a quick cursory view and then quickly go on their way.