The story
Seosan Haemieupseong Festival in Seosan
Seosan's autumn festival fills the remarkably intact Haemieupseong fortress, built in the late fifteenth century, with a recreated traditional Korean marketplace, folk music, tightrope walking, and outdoor theater. The fortress carries a darker layered history as a site of mass Catholic persecution in the nineteenth century, giving the walls a dual identity as both a lively festival venue and a place of solemn pilgrimage.
Haemieupseong, a walled garrison town established in the late fifteenth century under King Seongjong, once housed the military command overseeing coastal defense for the wider Chungcheong region, and its remarkably intact walls, gates, and administrative buildings make it one of the best-preserved fortress towns surviving from the Joseon dynasty.