Heunginjimun and Its Half-Moon Wall

A gate standing alone in the road

Seoul City Wall website: in 1907 the walls on either side of Heunginjimun were torn down, leaving the gate as it stands today.

From Exit 1 of Dongdaemun Station (Lines 1 and 4) to Heunginjimun Park, the map route is 221 meters — three minutes. Before heading up to the park, Rina first stands on the pavement across the road. Find on map

The gate sits like an island in the middle of a wide road. The walls that should run out from either side of it are gone. The Seoul City Wall website says the walls on either side of Heunginjimun were torn down in 1907, leaving the gate as it stands today. That is why, seen from a car window, the gate always seemed to be “somewhere in the traffic.”

Rina draws a line in her notebook — where the wall should have run out on both sides — and writes above it: “1907. Cut here.”

It wasn’t only this gate. The Korea Heritage Service says the wall was begun in 1395, and that in 1422 every stretch built of earth was rebuilt in stone. It adds that during the colonial period gates and walls were torn down in the name of city planning, and that more was lost after liberation and in the Korean War. What Rina had seen through the bus window was a gate left standing on its own, cut loose from that long wall.

The half-moon wall

According to the Korea Heritage Service, a semicircular enclosing wall (ongseong) was built on the outside of Heunginjimun to protect the gate. It is the only one of the city’s eight gates with an ongseong.

From across the road you can see a second, curved stone wall in front of the gate, wrapped around it from the outside like a half-moon. The Korea Heritage Service calls it an ongseong and explains that it was built in a semicircle to protect and defend the gate. And Heunginjimun is the only one of the city’s eight gates to have one. Find on map

Only one of the eight. Rina stops at that sentence. Why only the east gate? The Seoul City Wall website answers with the land itself: Seoul is high in the west and low in the east, so militarily Dongdaemun was the most vulnerable gate — which is why an extra ongseong was built outside it.

The Korea Heritage Service lists the four main gates of the wall: Heunginjimun to the east, Donuimun to the west, Sungnyemun to the south and Sukjeongmun to the north. Rina thinks of Sungnyemun. There was no curved wall like this in front of it. She draws a half-moon in her notebook.

Two roofs, a gate from 1869

According to the Korea Heritage Service, Heunginjimun is the east gate among the eight gates of the Seoul city wall, commonly called Dongdaemun. It was built in 1396 when the wall was raised, rebuilt in 1453, and the present gate dates from 1869. It is a two-storey building five bays wide and two bays deep under a hipped roof, with bracket clusters both on and between the columns — slender and heavily decorated, typical of the late Joseon period.

On top of the gate sits a two-storey pavilion. According to the Korea Heritage Service it is five bays wide and two bays deep, under a hipped roof that slopes down on all four sides. Find on map

Look up under the eaves and the timber is dense: bracket clusters sit not only on top of the columns but between them too. The Korea Heritage Service describes them as slender and heavily decorated — typical of the late Joseon period.

“Late Joseon” is there for a reason. Heunginjimun was first built in 1396, when the city wall went up, and rebuilt in 1453 — but the gate that stands today dates from 1869. Rina writes 1396 and 1869 side by side and joins them with an arrow.

From above

A citizen reporter’s article on the Seoul Metropolitan Government’s “Seoul in My Hand” platform (15 February 2021): Heunginjimun Park was created in 2010 on the former site of Ewha Womans University’s Dongdaemun Hospital. Set on the slope rising east of the gate toward Naksan, it lets you see into the ongseong from above.

East of the gate, a slope rises toward Naksan: Heunginjimun Park. A 2021 citizen reporter’s article on the city’s “Seoul in My Hand” platform describes it as a park created in 2010 on the former site of Ewha Womans University’s Dongdaemun Hospital, open all year round and free. Find on map

Climb a little and your eyes are level with the gate; climb a little more and you are looking down on it. The same article notes that from this height you can see into the ongseong. From across the road Rina saw only the outside of the curved wall. From here she can see the round lawn inside it.

Rina corrects the half-moon in her notebook. What she drew across the road was only the outer line. Now she adds the inner one. Behind the park, a restored stretch of the city wall runs on toward Naksan.

At one side of the park is the Seoul City Wall Museum. The city’s wall website says it occupies floors one to three of the Seoul Design Support Center, built on part of the old Dongdaemun Hospital site, and the museum’s own website lists it as open Tuesday to Sunday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. (last entry 5:30), free of charge. Follow the wall uphill from the park and you are on the Naksan section — 3.2 kilometers from Hyehwamun to Gwanghuimun, about an hour and a half on foot, open 24 hours, according to the same website. Rina notes the numbers down for another day.

As the sun drops, Rina walks out along the wall toward the top of the park. She leaves with one thing. From a car window Dongdaemun looks like a single gate; seen twice on foot, it is two layers — a gate and a curved wall. Of the eight gates, this is the only one built that way.

Her note is short. Dongdaemun: once from across the road, once from the park above. The curved wall shows its inside only from above. The park, as of that 2021 article, is always open.

(※ This article includes staged images created with AI.)