Koguryo Kingdom

This is one of my personal favorite WHS. However, even for visitors from our own country, its history remains quite unfamiliar, and the site itself is not among the more popular tourist destinations. That’s why I’d love to share a bit about my experience here.

In October 2023, just before the first snow, I visited this site with my family during a long self-driving trip along the China–North Korea border.

The different parts of the site are scattered around the outskirts of Ji'an, a lively small town with a large ethnic Korean population. It’s not easy to get there by public transportation, so having or renting a car really helped.

Before entering the site itself, we first visited the Ji’an Museum in the town. It provides a great introduction to the history of the Goguryeo Kingdom and displays exquisite artifacts excavated from the site. My personal favorites were the horse ornaments, which had a very unique and striking style. The whole museum can be visited in about an hour, and I highly recommend stopping by before heading to the heritage site.

After that, we drove to Wandu Mountain City, located in the mountains, featuring the remains of city walls, gates, and palace foundations. It was late autumn, and the mountains were absolutely breathtaking with vibrant colors—locals call this rich autumn landscape five-Colored Mountain. We first walked to the palace site, where only the foundation remains are still visible, right next to a cornfield tended …

Koguryo Kingdom covers the sites on the Chinese side of the border. There is a separate, identical inscription for the DPRK which will probably never merge.

I visited this place a couple of years ago in winter. Not the best place to visit in winter but it was a lovely sunny day. My main plan was to continue north to Harbin for the ice festival so it "had" to be winter.

Arriving by train I rented a taxi for the day. The driver knew all locations well. You buy a ticket for 4 attractions although I don't remember getting checked for the tombs and the mountain city, maybe the driver just let someone know I have a ticket while I was away. The first one is the Haotai Stele where a guide was explaining the stele with another group of tourists. It is inside a building with large glass windows. It was built in AD 414 and describes the founding of the Koguryo Kingdom. There is a lot of information about the stele online I don't wish to repeat, but looking into it is certainly an interesting and long (very long) read.

Next stop is the Jiangjunfen Tomb and surrounded by several of the general's subordinates. There is not much to see but walk around the square structure. Impressive tomb nonetheless, sometimes referred to as the Pyramid of the East for good reason. Here I was also stopped by what I'm quite are fake policemen pretending to …

I have been to this WHS in 2008. Koguryo kindom was not an empire since its kings were always authorised by Chinese emperors. The most visitable place is Ji'an, Jilin province. Besides of some ancient ruins, you can see a big stele "Haotaiwangbei", which is famous for its Chinese calligraphy. Wukuifen is an ancient tomb with many mural showing how ancient Chinese understand the universe, the Chinese legendary emperor Fuxi and Shennong was pictured on the wall.