A History Lesson
A long time ago, not too long after the Romans invaded Britain, the land of ancient Korea became distinctly divided into three kingdoms. The Gorguryeo dynasty was situated to the north, and included most of what North Korea is today. The south was split between the Baekje dynasty to the west and the Silla (pronounced Shilla) dynasty to the east. This was a dangerous age in Korea as there were many battles fought between these kingdoms and the borders were constantly changing. Japan and China also had parts to play in this history, and allegiances between the dynasties of Japan, China and Korea were constantly changing. However, much of the period involved Baekje allied with Japan and Silla allied with China. Eventually Silla's relationships with the Chinese Tang Dynasty proved strong and they managed to defeat the Baekje and Gorguryeo dynasties, creating for the first time a unified Korea.
Although sadly, most of the historical sites in Korea have been burnt down, the stories still remain and the sites have undergone major restoration works. A curious traveller can still explore many of these places, hiking along ancient fortress walls whilst imaging how the palaces and cities they encircle would have looked almost two thousand years ago. It's common to see restored wooden pagodas dotted around the sites, painted in deep red and raised to a level high enough for stunning views of the cities and mountains beyond.
The Baekje dynasty is said to have based it's first capital not too far from present day Seoul. However, some time during their occupation they came under attack from the north by the Gorguryeo dynasty and were forced to move their capital further south. A new city was established named Ungjin and is now known as Gongju. Later again, they had to move their capital to a city which was then called Sabi. It's name today is Buyeo.
Gongju and Buyeo are conviently located around an hours bus ride of my current base in Daejeon. During my few weeks in Daejeon, a curiosity of Korean history and my thirst for hiking high around a fortress wall got the better of me. I decided to travel to Gongju, and experience it for myself.
Gongju
I remember we left for Gongju on what seemed an apocalyptic day. Three of us were travelling, and being our first trip out of the station, we embarked on an adventure to discover the bus station. Getting off at a nearby subway station, we started a 45 minute walk to the station, not knowing the weather we were about to face. As we walked, the skies darkened and darkened, and heavy winds blew dust in our face. The air felt muggier, as the humidity increased. We could feel a storm approaching, but onwards we walked. As we past, we were surprised to see two young ladies dancing on a podium outside an electronics shop, in shirts and hotpants. They were singing advertising messages to the passing traffic as the wind howled against them as if it was trying to blow them off the podium. As we walked further, we could feel the yellow dust which had swept eastward from China blowing in our faces. Our walk was longer than we had wanted and I really hoped that we would make it to the bus stop before the heavens opened.
Alas we did, and within 10 minutes of buying our tickets and boarding the bus, the sky shed tears over the valleys of Daejeon. We couldn't see much out of the window, the rain was heavy and the sky was thick. Our fingers were crossed hoping that this rain was only contained within the valley, and it would subside once we got to Gongju. I decided to study some Korea, taking my focus away from the world and weather outside. When my attention returned, the rain had settled a little. We had left the city, and were driving along a river towards the town of Gongju.The bus dropped us off just outside the bus station terminal. The rain was still a little heavy and we sided with a five minute taxi ride over a thirty minute walk to the fortress. The fortress's name is Gonsanseong, and has been built on top of a river. Situated adjacent to the fortress lay a conveniently located tourist information office. Due to our irrevocable charm, and perhaps the fact we looked like Western Tourists, we convinced them to part with a few of their English audio guides. Feeling readily equipped, we decided to enter the fortress.
The interior of the fortress felt rather sparse itself in places, as there was a lot of open space and not so many buildings. However what made the fortress interesting was the 2.4 km fortress wall which you could navigate, spotting views of the town below. The audio guide proved useful, inside as you could touch it to designated signs to learn the relevant history. There were many tales to be told of people who had lived there and battles which had been fought. The hike around the wall proved more arduous than we had expected. We'd expected only a stroll, but there were points that you'd have to climb a great many steep steps to reach the highest point of the fortress. They say that in summer you can practice shooting arrows off the fortress wall, into the river, and I meant a mental note to return here to try this.
The rain and the steep climbs eventually caused us to become tired of hiking the circumference, and we decided to head to the centre where the palace apparently lay. We were soon to be disappointed though, as there lay not a palace there, but low metal fences which marked their original placement. The guide, helped us here as it contained multimedia videos of how the palace used to look, and certainly made the trip more interesting. I vaguely remember a story of a king and some rice cakes, but wish I could remember more to tell the story here-wither . 
After exploring the fortress, we had just enough time to explore the tomb of a famous Baekje leader known as King Muryeong. Scattered all over the land of Korea, you can find burial mounds similar in concept to the Egyptian pyramids. A dead body was encased in a coffin and buried underground. After this a large pile of dirt was dumped on top of the coffin, and left to be carpeted with grass. Around the site of King Muryeong's tomb are many burial mounds. Unfortunately all but one have been pillaged by grave robbers and poor King Muryeong was left all alone in ground for a long time, until he was discovered by Korean archaeologists. It was not actually possible to visit his tomb itself, but an expedition has been set up under one of the pillaged burial mounds where you can crawl inside a couple of replica tombs, and a replica coffin. The tiles inside the replica tomb were interesting, resembling a pile of antique books stacked neatly on a shelf.
We finished the day in a restaurant just on the outskirts of Gongju which was named 'Cape Town.' This was quite fitting for one of the member's of our group as she is South African. She told us when experiencing the restaurant however that it didn't remind her too much of home. Not much to our surprise on entering the restaurant, we found that it was a little on the dear side. We were so weary at this point however, that we didn't really feel too fussed about this. I opted for a cheaper meal on the menu, a little bit cautious about if at first as it was called 'octupus chilli rice.' I'd had a Korean chilli based dish called 'fire chicken' a couple of weeks previously, and it turned out to be the spiciest dish I'd ever experienced. The fire chicken was so strong that I felt as soon as I ate it that I was breathing fire through my nostrils. Fortunately this octopus dish was quite mild in comparison and I ended up enjoying the food and the comfortable atmosphere.
When we left the restaurant, we realized that it would be hard to flag down a taxi as we were quite far out of the city. We had to walk down a dark alleyway, and although a little nervous, we made it back to street-lights in one peace. We then bumped into a Korean student of Gongju university who voluntarily went out of his way to walk us to the bus station. We thanked him gratefully, grabbed a bus ticket and some snacks, and jumped on the bus. On the way back, I was recalling how the audio guide had mentioned a great battle that had been fought at Gongju,. The Baekje dynasty lost this battle and fled to another town, now known as Buyeo. I slept that night knowing that I would soon visit Buyeo, willing to complete the story.
Buyeo
It was only a couple of weeks later that I brought action to that pledge. Myself and a friend boarded the bus to Buyeo, on a much sunnier day, looking forward to another fortress adventure. On arriving in Buyeo, one of the first things I noted was that there weren't any traffic lights in the town. This was quite different to Daejeon, where there are a great many traffic lights scattered around the city, which seem to slow both the traffic and pedestrians down. We were quite hungry when we arrived and our first priority was to find a restaurant where we could eat lunch. Usually, in Korea this isn't too difficult a task, as it is just as common for people to eat out here as at home. However, we were feeling quite fussy and we didn't stop until we found a restaurant which took our fancy. We opted for one we found in the lonely planet called Gudurae Dolssambap, with a wooden touristy looking exterior and a rustic, cosy feeling interior. The food was reasonably priced and decent, and we left quite satisfied.
We left the restaurant. Soon after walking down the road towards the river, we came across a sculpture park. This contained much wacky and wonderful modern art including what looked like an egg inside a stomach, a giant red 'O' and another giant red 'C'. Akin to most parks in Korea, it also contained its own outdoor gym. This particular one had a bench press, which I wondered over to try out. Being the only two wayguks (Korean word for foreigners) in the vicinity however, it wasn't long before I had an audience of several young Korean children watching me. One of them decided in fact that the weight was not heavy enough for me, and decided to pull the bar back towards the earth as I was trying to lift it. Deciding it was probably better not to cause any injuries this early, we wondered down towards the river where we had a chance to watch a Korean baseball team practising on the river bank. Ferries that had been built as if they were traditional Baekje longboats were sailing along the river, and it wasn't long before we were edging to have a ride on them ourselves.
We walked over to the harbour and bought a couple of tickets on the ferry. After a quick break to buy some souvenirs, we were summoned on to the ferry and much to our surprise, we seemed to be sharing board with a large Korean retirement party. Many grandmas and grandads were talking amongst themselves, taking in the stunning heights of the rocky crags and hills which towered above the river. The boat soon stopped at Busosan fortress port and one of the older Korean women came forward and beckoned for us to get off the boat. We would have liked to have stayed longer, as the journey felt peaceful and the views from the boat were beautiful. However, we didn't know how much Taekwondo the passengers on the boat knew, and Mr Miyagi taught me when I was youngerthat you should never mess with your elders. This particularly applies to Korea.
Busosan was the main fortress ground where the Baekje empire relocated their palace after being defeated by the Gorguryeo dynasty at Gongju. The fortress itself had a different feel to Gongsanseong, the latter being built on top of dirt. However Busosan is much more rocky, with dramatic cliffs and stunning views over the river below. After buying some ice-cream, we climbed up a steep hill from the port to a small temple and a spring in which only one type of plant is rumoured to grow. Allegedly slaves had to put a leaf from this plant into the water that they carried to their superiors, to prove that it came from the spring. We took some time to soak in the beauty of the temple and then pushed ourselves up a steep climb to relax on large outcrop at the top of the cliff. This cliff, I later learnt, had a very sad story, as it marked the very end of the Baekje empire. When Silla had Baekje cornered inside Busosan, the inhabitants, including 3000 court ladies, decided to leap off the cliff, plummeting to their doom towards the river below. They did so, as to be captured by Silla soldiers would be a great dishonour to them and their people.Further exploration took us up to the peak of Busosan (san actually means hill or mountain), where a viewing pagoda allowed us to see the river below. Up to now the walk had been very crowded, and it was just starting to settle down. It was getting quite late and we were getting quite tired, so we started to head away from the river, towards the north exit. We went through some woodland on the way and took a short-cut finding ourselves in an open field on a hill. Feeling quite sleepy, we thought it would be a good idea to have a nap here, lying down under the soft sunlight and resting our eyes for about half an hour. When we woke, we realized that most people had left, and followed in their footsteps, not wanting to get locked inside the fortress. Just as we exited the field on which we had slept, we turned around and noticed a sign. It marked the field as being the former palace grounds of Buson. We left feeling a bit guilty that we may have defamed such a reverent place.
The evening was a little uneventful, we had a couple of beers before getting the bus back to Daejeon. The journey back was sleepy, and just before I shut my eyes, I hoped that no ghosts of Busosan would come back to haunt me in my dreams for sleeping on their former home.
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So there ends my story of the exploration of the Baekje kingdom. It's been much longer than I expected, but my relationship with writing usually causes this. My next post will be about the several hikes I have embarked on since I've been on in Korea. I'll write back soon, hope you enjoyed this post.
P.S. here are the flickr links for the Gongju and Buyeo albums:
