King Tongmyong´s Mausoleum - Nordkorea-Information

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King Tongmyong´s Mausoleum

King Tongmyong’s Mausoleum is located in Ryongsan-ri, Ryokpho District, 22 km south of downtown Pyongyang.

Tongmyong (298 BC-259 BC) was the founder-king of Koguryo.

Koguryo, which existed from 277 BC to 668 AD, had a large territory in the eastern part of Asia and was the most powerful state in the history of Korea.

The Koguryo people had a high sense of national pride and independence, and their worship of King Tongmyong was absolute. For about 1,000 years it dominated all fields, including politics, national consciousness, religious faith and cultural life.

Koguryo moved her capital, and this mausoleum, to Pyongyang in 427.

The mausoleum demonstrates the worship of King Tongmyong as well as the excellent architecture of the period.

The site covers an area of about 170 hectares, including a pine grove of about 40 hectares which was planted for the mausoleum in the period of Koguryo. The mausoleum is surrounded with mountains, rivers and plains, and is accordingly quiet and beautiful.

In the mausoleum section are King Tongmyong’s Mausoleum, the Jongrung Temple and Koguryo relics around it.

The mausoleum itself is a stone-chambered earth tomb, facing south. The square tomb is 11.5 metres high and each side is 34 metres long.

Inside the tomb are the inner chamber, front chamber and hallway. The inner chamber has a square floor and stepped ceiling (4.21 metres long from east to west, 4.18 metres long from north to south, 3.88 metres high). The floor, wall and ceiling of the front chamber and hallway are made of stone.

The doors which lie between the front chamber and inner chamber are rare among examples of the tombs of Koguryo.

There still remain 104-lotus mural paintings on the wall and ceiling of the inner chamber, and also found around it are relics such as coffin nails, ornamental pieces and hairpins.

In front of the upper layer of the tomb section are a stone table, a stone lantern and two stone tigers. On both sides are stone statues of civil officials and military officers who served King Tongmyong and next kings, together with stone horses, a pair of stone posts and a stone brazier.

In the lower layer of the tomb section are the monument to Tongmyong the great, the founder-king of Koguryo and monument bearing inscriptions of achievements of Tongmyong the great, the founder-king of Koguryo on the east side, a shrine on the west and the gate to the mausoleum on the south.

The shrine consists of a hall, corridor and royal house. A picture of King Tongmyong is painted on the north wall of the royal house.

The gate to the mausoleum is built in a unique style.

The Jongrung Temple, which prayed for the soul of King Tongmyong, is situated about 120 metres south of the mausoleum.

The mausoleum is surrounded by 19 tombs of generals, ministers and scholars who performed great feats in the building of Koguryo and its development.

Reconstruction work on the mausoleum, which was destroyed and illegally dug by foreign invaders, was completed on May 14, Juche 82 (1993).

The Korean people built Monument to Reconstructed King Tongmyong’s Mausoleum here to convey President Kim Il Sung’s concern and care for the reconstruction of the mausoleum.


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