Tomb at the Wandu Mountain City 丸都山城

According to the literature that I have read prior to coming to explore the ruins of the Korguryo kingdom, it was a highly advanced and cultured society at that time much like their peers in China at that time – Tang dynasty. It was very likely that the two cultured intermingled and a lot of Chinese culture also flowed into the Koguryo culture. One of the interesting features of the Koguryo society was how the buried their dead. The Chinese normally bury their dead by burying them in featureless mounds, probably reflecting the fact that in death all of us are the same.

The Koguryo culture has a different take on this practice. They instead build great tombs which are basically large rocks or stones which have been piled on top of the other forming what some might call a pyramid, which incidentally was also a place for burying the dead in ancient Egypt. The similarity in uncanny but the size of the tombs wasn’t. I remember a friend of mine who told me that the tombs were interesting but don’t expect them to be big. True enough they weren’t that big. My guide says that the richer the family is, the bigger and taller the tomb was. Off to the side of the tomb was a wooden viewing deck so that people won’t go climbing the centuries old relic.

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