UNESCO World Heritage Site, Namhansanseong Fortress
The beautiful pine forest located within the walls of Namhansanseong Fortress is the largest pine colony in the capital area. It has a high conservation value because it has been cultivated and preserved by the inhabitants of Sanseong-ri village, who voluntarily formed an anti-deforestation association during the Japanese colonial era, as its fine trees were being indiscriminately cut down for use as war materials and firewood.
In particular, as Namhansanseong was used as a base for anti-Japanese activities during the Japanese occupation of Korea, both its walls and the temporary palace were seriously damaged, while the Namhansan Elementary School building was totally burnt down during the Korean War (1950-53). On May 10, 1954, soon after the Korean War, Namhansanseong was designated as Korea’s first National Park and the Gyeonggi-do Products Exhibition Hall was built at the site of the Temporary Palace to display cultural heritages and products related to Namhansanseong.
In the late 1960s, Gyeonggi-do conducted a basic survey of Namhansanseong, which was required prior to designating the fortress area as a national park, and established the basic plan for the creation of a provincial park at Namhansanseong in Gyeonggi-do. First, a basic survey of the tourist and traffic situation in Namhansanseong was carried out and its findings were included in the Basic Survey Planning Report for the Namhansanseong Provincial Park Candidate Site, which was published in 1969.
In addition, the abovementioned report offers a glimpse into everyday life in Sanseong-ri at that time: about 100 households lived in Sanseong-ri, which had diverse public facilities including Jungbu-myeon Office, Namhansan Elementary School, a police substation, a post office, two inns, one medical center, and one pharmacy. Most of the private houses were tile-roofed houses and wooden houses, while the public facilities and inns were Western-style houses with a tiled roof. Regarding traffic routes, along with Unam-ro, there was a natural pathway with a length of 7.8 kilometers and a width of about 5 meters, which ran roughly parallel to the Sanseongcheon Stream from Dongmun to Gwangjiwon. At that time, around 150,000 people, mostly day tourists, visited Namhansanseong each year.
Systematic management of the fortress began on March 17, 1971, the date of Namhansanseong’s designation as a national park. Local Road No. 308 (342), running from Gwangjiwon to Seongnam via Namhansanseong, was paved and improved in 1974, and various cultural heritages underwent large-scale repair and restoration. Also in 1974, the Jungbu-myeon Office was moved from Sanseong-ri to Gwangjiwon-ri.
Namhansanseong Management Office was opened in 1976 to protect the cultural heritages of Namhansanseong and to maintain and control the park’s facilities.
With the advent of private car ownership in the mid-1980s, the village of Sanseong-ri inside Namhansanseong became a well-known tourist attraction in the vicinity of Seoul. For the convenience of local residents and tourists alike, various facilities such as KFCC (bank), the Sanseong Community Health Center, and the Jungbu Agricultural Cooperative Association (Sanseong-ri Branch) were opened there. Meanwhile, the Namhansanseong Sewage Treatment Center was opened in January 1999, improving the area’s ability to treat waste water.
Since the mid-1990s, the local government and a number of local cultural organizations have actively engaged in activities aimed at shedding new light on Namhansanseong. For example, the Love Namhansanseong Association was formed in April 1996 and has remained active to this day. In addition, the Namhansanseong Preservation Council was formed within the Gyeonggi Provincial Council in 1997, while the Gyeonggi-do Provincial Office established a plan for the comprehensive restoration of Namhansanseong in 1998.
Meanwhile, since 1999, the locals have continued to publish the Sanseong-ri Village Newspaper at their own initiative, playing an important role in reviving a village community centered on the residents, and recalling the voluntary establishment of the anti-deforestation association by the villagers during the Japanese colonial era to cultivate and preserve the local pine forest.
The Namhansanseong Provincial Park organization surveys the natural resources within the park every ten years in accordance with the Natural Parks Act. It has also built a database of natural ecosystem research and park management in order to study ecosystem conservation and use the database as a source of research data. Furthermore, it conducts regular monitoring in order to protect and manage the wild animals and plants in Namhansanseong Provincial Park and Namhansanseong Fortress, and reflects its findings in the establishment of effective ways of managing and protecting the natural resources.
