고종황제의 금곡 홍릉 연구 = Study of Emperor Kojong[高宗皇帝]’s Hongreung [洪陵, Imperial Tomb] at Keumgok[金谷]

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Hongreung is the imperial grave of Emperor Kojong and his wife Empress Myungseong[明成皇后]. She was killed by Japanese in 1895 but her national funeral was deferred for two years. In 1897, King Kojong appointed himself Emperor by declaring Korea as Daehan Empire[大韓帝國]. Meantime, his wife was buried as Empress at Hongreung graveyard at Cheongryang-ri. At that time, Emperor Kojong ordered his ministers to dispatch an emissary to Beiking, China to copy Imperial Tomb System of Ming Dynasty in order to develop Hongreung into a really empress scale tomb. But, this was not realized because of tight schedule. Therefore, he had the stone carvings of the tomb at Cheongryang-ri repaired referring to both Korean traditional royal and Chinese imperial tomb styles. However, Hongreung at Cheongryang-ri was too small to provide a space for an imperial graveyard. So, Emperor Kojong decided to remove the Empress from Hongreung to a new imperial graveyard to be builtat Keumgok (currently Yangju area, Kyunggi-do) from 1900, including a provisional tomb[壽陵] for himself. He established an ad hoc government office to be responsible for the graveyard construction and removal[遷陵․山陵都監] and chose Keumgok as auspicious location. Then, he mobilized all available human and physical resources to establish Korean imperial grave system and to build comparable tomb buildings and stone carvings[石儀]. Though he hasted to remove the Empress tomb by providing all necessary facilities exerting all efforts, it was delayed because of various other urgent state affairs. In 1919 when the Emperor deceased, the current Hongreung Imperial Tomb at Keumgok was finally completed and various stone carvings which had already been prepared were deployed at the graveyard during his national funeral.
Thus, enormously large buildings and various stone carvings which had been built or prepared while Kojong was alive as Emperor of Daehan Empire(1897~1910) but the stone carvings were fully deployed at Hongreung, Keumgok, only in 1919 when he passed away. Therefore, Hongreung, Keumgok, is the only imperial graveyard in Korea. It includes various buildings and sculpture pieces, which are highly significant in Korean history, especially the country’s art history. According some scholars, however, the Imperial Japanese government allegedly chose the place for Hongreung, Keumgok and built the tomb according to Japanese styles, when Kojong passed away in 1919. Consequently, because of such wrong allegation, Hongreung at Keumgok, Korea’s only imperial graveyard, has been mistakenly known as a tomb belonging to the Japanese colonial age, irrelevant with growth of royal tombs, architecture or sculpture in Chosun dynasty.
Therefore, this paper exerted to disclose that Hongreung at Keumgok is an imperial graveyard of Daehan Empire by collecting and compiling various historical records related to the national funeral of Empress Myungseong and Emperor Kojong. To that end, we have examined the entire processes and developments of building various royal or imperial graveyards, from Sukreung[肅陵] at Dongguneung[東九陵] built in 1895 to Hongreung at Cheongryang-ri in 1897, Hongreung at Keumgok in 1900 and Hongreung at Keumgok in 1919. In this connection, we have examined the related historical records, including establishment of an ad hoc government office [Dogam 都監], organization of its administrators, formulation of expense budget, procurement of stone and wood materials to build the imperial graveyard, and mobilization and service of skilled craftsmen. We also compared and reviewed the stylistic changes between the sketch drawing[見樣] and actual relics of stone carvings at Hongreung, Keumgok.
We have discovered the following significant facts through a minute examination of historical records[儀軌] that describe the circumstances in those days : First, Hongreung at Keumgok was not built in 1919 as so far known. Emperor Kojong founded an a...