Lost in Nagan Eupseong Folk Village

There is a lot to unpack here. First I am getting back into one of my themes of  writing about Korean castles and also my experiences with the culture. This site achieves both as this is the only surviving example of a functional walled town in Korea. In Korean, Eupseong means town wall, or walled town. There are a few remaining eupseong in Korea, or portions of the walls but only Nagan Eupseong is nearly fully intact, complete with a traditional Hanok village tucked behind its walls.

Getting out here was no easy feat, but by way of a mal bus I arrived, a little groggy but I intended to spend the entire day there, so the early start was intended. Before marching over to the walls, I did manage to grab a coffee from the shop across from the main gate in the new town. After paying the entrance fee I was off. The walls are relatively low, not the imposing walls of many medieval  European towns, but they served to protect the village from brigades more than invading armies. For that the town would have been abandoned and the populace defending a nearby mountain stronghold. The parapet has been reconstructed for only a small portion of the south wall, to give the gate and protruding bastion a more photogenic appearance.

The walk along the walls is quite peaceful. Thankfully on the day there weren’t too many tourist to crowd me off the walls and I was able to walk the entire 1.4 km length along the walls. On the northwest corner of the wall there is a small hillock that the walls ascends, which if there weren’t so much untamed foliage would have made a spectacular view. Once I had completed a lap along the top of the walls I ventured into the town. There were restored government buildings which would have served the town magistrate and local general, as well an an official guest house, built to a standard design all through the kingdom, every important town pretty much had the same building following a strict code in layout.

I had a traditional Korean meal, pajeon, which is a specialty of the area I was told. The use of English here was much more restrictive than in other parts of Korea that I had ventured. Thankfully an order of makkeoli soothed away any of my anxieties on speaking Korean, which at the time had not progressed much. Makkeoli for the uninitiated is a milky off white sparkling rice wine, which is often the beverage of choice when hiking or outings, ranks right up there with soju in popularity, but requires a little getting used to. The village while outwardly appearing as it would have a century or more ago did have trappings of modernity. A point to remember is that these are occupied dwellings, so one should  not just waltz in like it’s an attraction, but many ajuma will gladly let you take a peak inside their home. Big flat screen TVs were still fairly new to the market at the time, a few could be seen tucked snugly in the small rooms of several of the dwellings.

After touring some of the restored government buildings I ventured on for a circuit walk outside of the town. Much of the more interesting features were to the south and west side, while the northern and eastern portion of the walls were in the most disrepair. I suspect most tourist will journey from the south to the north along the western wall before cutting into town to have their lunch and then continue on to their next destination. I would add more on some of the features that are also unique for Nagan Eupseong, but I will save those tidbits for my work on Korean castles which is still in progress. I will close with this, it is well worth a site, and while it does lose some of its authenticity, it was one of the few places in Korea where it was as close as one can get to seeing something of a living town, not quite true to the period, but it was as close as I ever got.