Hwaseong Fortress (1794): King Jeongjo's Fortress at Suwon

Hwaseong Fortress, the walled city at Suwon south of Seoul, was built between 1794 and 1796 by order of King Jeongjo of Korea’s Joseon dynasty. Combining traditional Korean design with new engineering methods, it is one of the most advanced fortifications of its age in East Asia. A detailed official record of its construction later made it possible to rebuild the fortress after the Korean War.

Background: a son’s devotion

King Jeongjo (reigned 1776–1800) came to the throne carrying a family tragedy. In 1762 his father, Crown Prince Sado, had been ordered by his own father, King Yeongjo, to enter a wooden rice chest, where he died after eight days. Sado had shown violent and erratic behaviour, and the episode was bound up with factional politics at court.

When Jeongjo became king he worked to restore his father’s honour. In 1789 he moved Sado’s tomb from a site near Yangju to Mount Hwa, near the old town of Suwon, a location regarded as auspicious. The town’s residents were moved a short distance north to the foot of Mount Paldal, where Jeongjo planned a new city.

The project had wider aims. Jeongjo wanted a strong point to guard the southern approach to Seoul, a base for a new royal guard unit loyal to him, and a model city that would encourage trade and agriculture. Korea had suffered devastating invasions in the Imjin War and the Qing invasion of 1636, and the lessons of those wars shaped the design.

Planning and design

The king assigned much of the planning to Jeong Yak-yong, a young scholar of the Silhak or “practical learning” movement, which favoured useful knowledge over abstract philosophy. Jeong studied Chinese and Korean writings on fortification as well as Chinese works that reflected European mechanics, introduced to East Asia by Jesuit missionaries.

Jeong drew up building rules and designed lifting devices. The best known is the geojunggi, a crane using pulleys that let a few workers lift heavy stones. He also devised wheeled carts and other tools to move materials efficiently.

The design took account of firearms and cannon, which had transformed warfare since the sixteenth century. Walls were given loopholes for guns, projecting bastions allowed defenders to fire along the face of the wall, and gun towers covered weak points. Earlier Korean town walls had been designed mainly against archers and infantry, so this was a significant modernisation.

The fortress walls run for about 5.7 kilometres around the city, following the slopes of Mount Paldal and the plain below. Unusually for Korea, builders used fired brick alongside stone in many structures. Along the walls stood four main gates, water gates, command posts, observation towers, artillery bastions, hidden gates and a beacon tower with five chimneys for signalling.

Construction, 1794–1796

Work began in the first month of 1794 by the lunar calendar, under the direction of the veteran minister Chae Je-gong. Rather than relying only on unpaid compulsory labour, the government paid wages to workers and skilled craftsmen, recording their names and payments. This was a notable departure from traditional practice.

Paying labourers served several purposes. It reduced the burden on the peasantry, attracted skilled stonemasons, carpenters and brickmakers, and reflected the king’s wish to be seen as a ruler who cared for his people. The detailed accounting also allowed the court to track spending closely and to reward workers who performed well.

The project was completed in 1796, after about 28 months of actual building; work was suspended for several months in 1794 because of drought. The original estimate had been roughly ten years. Contemporary records put the total cost at around 870,000 nyang of cash, together with large quantities of rice.

Within the walls stood a detached royal palace, the Hwaseong Haenggung, where the king stayed during visits to his father’s tomb. In 1795 Jeongjo led a great procession from Seoul to Hwaseong to celebrate the sixtieth birthday of his mother, Lady Hyegyeong, an event recorded in a richly illustrated official volume. Lady Hyegyeong’s own memoirs remain a key source on the Sado tragedy.

Jeongjo also encouraged settlement and commerce in the new city. He offered incentives to merchants to move there, supported new farmland and reservoirs nearby, and stationed units of his new royal guard, the Jangyongyeong, at the fortress. Some historians have suggested he intended Hwaseong to become a second capital, or even a place of retirement after handing the throne to his son, but his plans remain a matter of interpretation.

Key features

Paldalmun and Janganmun are the great southern and northern gates, each protected by a semicircular outer wall called an ongseong. Janganmun is often described as the largest city gate in Korea.

Hwahongmun is a seven-arched water gate where the Suwon stream passes through the wall, with a pavilion on top.

Banghwasuryujeong, a pavilion and command post above a pond, is admired as one of the most elegant buildings of the fortress.

Seojangdae, the western command post on the summit of Mount Paldal, overlooks the whole city.

Bongdon, the beacon tower, used fire by night and smoke by day to send signals; the number of lit chimneys indicated the level of danger.

The construction record

In 1796 work began on an official report of the project, the Hwaseong Seongyeok Uigwe. Completed in 1801 and printed with movable metal type, it belongs to the tradition of uigwe, the royal protocol books of the Joseon dynasty that recorded state ceremonies and works.

The report contains royal orders, plans, drawings of every structure and tool, lists of materials, workers’ names and wages, and accounts of costs. It is one of the most detailed records of any pre-modern construction project anywhere. The uigwe collection of the Joseon dynasty was inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in 2007.

Damage and restoration

Hwaseong suffered from neglect during the late nineteenth century and the Japanese colonial period. During the Korean War (1950–1953) parts of the walls and many buildings were badly damaged or destroyed.

Between 1975 and 1979 the South Korean government carried out a major restoration. Because the uigwe recorded dimensions and materials so precisely, builders could reconstruct gates, towers and walls closely following the original design. Some structures, such as parts of the palace, were rebuilt later.

The fortress has remained part of a living city rather than an isolated monument. Roads pass through its gates, and the walls enclose shops and homes. Visitors can walk almost the entire circuit, and every year Suwon stages a cultural festival that re-enacts the royal procession of 1795. In 1997 UNESCO inscribed Hwaseong Fortress on the World Heritage List.

Timeline

• 1762: Crown Prince Sado dies in a rice chest on King Yeongjo’s orders.
• 1776: Jeongjo becomes king.
• 1789: Sado’s tomb is moved to Mount Hwa near Suwon.
• 1794, early: Construction of Hwaseong begins.
• 1795: Jeongjo’s procession celebrates Lady Hyegyeong’s sixtieth birthday.
• 1796: The fortress is completed.
• 1800: Jeongjo dies.
• 1801: The Hwaseong Seongyeok Uigwe is printed.
• 1975–1979: Major restoration after Korean War damage.
• 1997: Hwaseong is inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Why it matters

Hwaseong Fortress embodies the ambitions of King Jeongjo’s reign: filial devotion, royal authority and openness to practical learning. Its innovative engineering and paid labour mark a late flowering of the Joseon dynasty, and the survival of its building record shows how careful documentation can preserve heritage even after destruction.