🎧 Yul's Korea Audio Guide
Daereungwon Tumuli & Cheomseongdae
Narrated in English with Korean phrases by YUL of KVIBE IDOLS.
🎵 Background music: Letter on the Wind (바람의 편지) — KVIBE IDOLS · Listen to the full song →
Full transcript
Annyeong, yeoreobun! Yul here, right in the middle of downtown Gyeongju. See those huge, round, grassy hills? Surprise, they're not hills. They're tombs! Welcome to Daereungwon, where Silla royals and nobles have been sleeping for around fifteen hundred years.
There are twenty-three large tombs in this park. For centuries, nobody knew exactly what was inside. Then, in 1973, archaeologists opened one of them, and found more than eleven thousand five hundred artifacts: a gold crown, gold belts, horse gear. Daebak!
But the biggest star was a painting on a saddle flap made of birch bark: a white horse galloping so fast, it looks like it's flying through the sky. So the tomb got the name Cheonmachong, the Tomb of the Heavenly Horse. And here's the twist: we still don't know for sure whose tomb it is! Many scholars think it could be King Jijeung, but it's still a mystery. Today you can walk inside and see how it was built.
Just a short walk away stands Cheomseongdae, built in the seventh century during the reign of Queen Seondeok. It's often called the oldest surviving astronomical observatory in Asia. Its body is made of about 365 stones, and people love to say that's one stone for each day of the year. Silla stargazers, big brain!
Yul's tip! Come in the late afternoon and stay until the lights come on around Cheomseongdae. In autumn, the fields nearby turn pink with muhly grass. Super photogenic!
Next, a royal pond where Silla princes partied, with a very strange dice. Kaja!
