Five Royal Tombs, a Stream Walk, and Backtracking

My morning in Gyeongju was a lazy one, and I didn’t see all that much. So, being negligent in the quantity of sightseeing I did in the morning, I had no choice but to have a lazy afternoon as well. Changing speeds too rapidly can give you whiplash.

This afternoon, I went only to see the Five Royal Tombs, took a bit of a stroll along a stream, and backtracked a bit to see a sight that was closed when I was there before.

I’ll be leaving Gyeongju tomorrow morning for my next destination. Consequently, expect to see only one entry tomorrow, about my afternoon in my next destination. And, because this is my last post from Gyeongju, I’ll put a summary of my time here below.

But first, a diversion.

At the end of my morning post, I mentioned that I had a lovely lunch in the Gyonchon traditional village. Just before I left the village, on my way to the Five Royal Tombs, a stage was set up, and a song-and-dance performance was happening. I don’t know how long it had been going on before I happened on it, but I videoed the rest of the performance. The said video is below.

Those performers left the stage after that number. A guy dressed in a sharp costume came on and started talking solely in Korean. Shortly, another guy, also dressed in a sharp costume, approached from the back of the audience. He was also on a microphone. They started bantering. And they’d occasionally interact with the crowd.

I think they might have been emcees. Because I don’t speak a word of Korean, I don’t have the faintest idea what they said. But I think they were kibitzing. Then again, they could have been working the crowd up to attack all foreigners, but they used a jocular tone so as not to tip me off. If that was the case, I fortunately left before they could effect their plan. But it probably was just witty banter in Korean. Probably.

Five Royal Tombs

In most of the information sources I’ve been using here, this site is usually listed as just the “Five Royal Tombs.” But I’ve also seen it listed as the “Oreung Tombs” or the “Oreung Five Royal Tombs.” I have, at times, had difficulty finding things here because the English versions of the names of sights don’t seem to be universally standardized. If you’re in Gyeongju and you’re trying to find the Five Royal Tombs in a mapping app, but can’t, try the other names.

Who says I never provide useful advice in these posts? Whoever it is, well, I outta…

The Five Royal Tombs are like the tombs I saw on my first full day here in Gyeongju at the Daereungwon Ancient Tomb Complex in that they were large burial mounds. However, they are a ways away, on the other side of Muncheon Stream. And Daereungwon Ancient Tomb Complex is several blocks from Muncheon Stream on its side of the stream.

The five tombs are grouped tightly together in a lovely park setting. In addition to the tombs, the park is filled with trees, a small pond, some flowers and a path through a narrow, twisty bamboo grove. It was quite pretty.

Off to the side of the grounds containing the Five Royal Tombs, there’s also a small shrine, Sungdeokjeon Shrine, built in 1429 to venerate the founder of the Shilla Kingdom. The shrine burned down during the Japanese invasions of 1592-1598, but it was rebuilt in 1600, renovated in 1704, and repaired in 1735. So, it’s not the original, but it’s still quite old.

There’s also an old well on the grounds, the Aryeongjeong Well. A sign beside it tells a story about the well.

That’s the third old well that I’ve encountered during this trip that had a story attached to it. Do all old wells here come with stories?

The story goes, “This historic well is known to be the place where Aryeong, who would become the consort of Silla’s first king Bak Hyeokgeose, was born. According to Samguksagi and Samgukyusa, a dragon appeared at Aryeongjeong Well to give birth to a baby girl. An old woman witnessed the amazing sight and took the baby to her home.

“Aryeong, whom the old woman named after the well, grew into an extraordinarily beautiful woman renowned for her great virtue, and these qualities eventually led her to become the wife of Bak Hyeokgeose, the first king of Silla. Her virtuous life and devoted service to the king eventually earned them the reverence of the people of Silla, who referred to the royal couple as the ‘Two Saints.'”

Another dragon/well story. I never knew dragons had such affinities for wells. You learn something every day. Some of the things you learn are inane and untrue, but what are you going to do?

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what the well was. The sign was by a small walled-in area, with an open door. Inside the area, there was a very small building. Its sides were open except that vertical bars, too close together for anyone to walk through, protected a shiny, engraved monolith inside. Was the well under the monolith somehow?

Behind the small building, there were three heavy, rectangular concrete slabs abutting each other lying on the ground. They looked too heavy to be a well cover, but didn’t seem to serve any other purpose. I’ll provide pictures of both. You can decide.

Muncheon Stream

After I finished with the Five Royal Tombs, I walked back to Muncheon Stream, the same Muncheon Stream that flows under Woljeonggyo Bridge, which I saw this morning. I then walked along it in the direction away from Woljeonggyo Bridge and toward Gyeongju’s major river, Hyeongsan River, which I walked a piece along on my first late afternoon here.

Muncheon Stream has more of a flow than what I would call a stream, but it’s not as wide as Hyeongsan River. There is a nice path that runs beside the peaceful Muncheon Stream on its grassy banks. It was quite an enjoyable stroll.

I walked to where Muncheon Stream intersects with Hyeongsan River. There, I followed a much narrower path along the river than the one I was on that first day. I followed that path to the blight of a parking lot that I mentioned in that opening post from Gyeongju.

From there, I headed into town and back to where I started my first full day in Gyeongju, the first park of the Daereungwon Ancient Tomb Complex.

More pictures of Muncheon Stream:

Geumgwanchong Tomb Information Centre

If you read my post about it, you might remember that they made a museum out of the excavated Geumgwanchong Tomb. I got in free that day because the next-door information centre, which is included in the same ticket, was closed that day for maintenance.

Today, I went back to see if the information centre was open. It was. I paid my fee (3000 won, which is less than $3 CDN) and went in.

There’s not much there. The information centre contains maybe half a dozen relics from the tombs and some information on different types of mound tomb constructions.

There’s also a wide-screen theatre. It projects a continuous loop video that, for the most part, shows aerial drone footage not just of the burial mounds in the Daereungwon Ancient Tomb Complex, but also tombs elsewhere.

One of them is an undersea tomb. (Gyeongyu isnt’t far from the sea. I could have gone to the seafront as a day trip. According to one of my guidebooks, the closest seaside town is a 40-minute train ride away.)

In the theatre, there’s a single row of benches, right up against the back wall. During the footage of the small island by the undersea tomb, they project onto the floor a video of surf gently rolling up to the audience’s feet.

And that was pretty much all that was in the information centre.

Gyeongju Summary

You might think that, because I had a lazy morning and afternoon, I’d run out of things to see and do in Gyeongju. In a way, you’d be right. I ran out of things that I knew about, and that interested me, in or close to the core of Gyeongju.

But what I really ran out of was full days to do things that would require a full day to do. There is, for example, the seaside that I could have visited.

Plus, Gyeongju is in a large mountain valley. It’s surrounded by mountains. Some of them have hiking trails. One, in particular, Namsan, has a lot of Buddhist sites on it. My guidebook says that there are a lot of trails on Namsan, and if you don’t want a strenuous uphill climb, there are trails that stick mainly to the base, where most of the Buddhist sights are.

(If you’ve been following along on this trip, “Namsan” might sound familiar to you. There’s also a mountain called “Namsan” in Seoul. I read that Namsan is the transliteration of the Korean word for “South Mountain.” I don’t know how many cities in Korea have a mountain called Namsan. It must get confusing.)

There’s also a recommended Folk Village that’s a ways away from Gyeongju. My guidebook suggests taking a taxi there because transit takes too long and is too complicated.

However, there’s the thing. Getting to each of those sights would take a while and, other than the train to the seaside, realistically, would generally require renting a car or taking a taxi. Uber is a possibility for the Folk Village, but I looked, and even by cab, it would take not much under half an hour each way. Then there’s the question of whether a taxi/Uber would be willing to take customers out and pick up customers from somewhat remote locations.

The point I’m trying to make, in a far more roundabout way than necessary, is that, as far as I could tell, everything else that interested me would require a full-day trip. And I ran out of full days. If I had more, I probably would have made the effort to figure out how to do some of those day trips.

In general, for my first couple of days here, I thought Gyeongju, as an urban centre, was meh to the extreme. Boring architecture and uninteresting streets. However, some of the sights within the city are spectacular.

After my first couple of days here, I stumbled on a couple of nice neighbourhoods, and my opinion of the city as an urban area improved. I still don’t think it’s a fabulous city, but I now think it’s nice. And I still think some of its sights are great.

So, if you just want to spend your time in the city of Gyeongju, the three full days (four nights) I spent here were more than enough. However, if you want to do some of the daytrips I missed (and I regret missing), you might want more time here.