Myeonangjeong Pavilion

On a low rise at the foot of Jebongsan in Damyang, a small pavilion open on all sides looks out over the fields. This is Myeonangjeong, built by the mid-Joseon official Song Sun after he left office. Scholars such as Yi Hwang (Toegye) visited, and younger men including Jeong Cheol, Gi Dae-seung, Go Gyeong-myeong and Im Je learned here. It is one of the places where Damyang's reputation as the home of gasa, a form of Korean-language verse, began.

Looking down at the earth, up at the sky

"Myeonang" means bowing your head to look down at the earth and raising it to look up at the sky. Song Sun (1493–1582; some sources give 1583 for his death) left his post in 1533, returned to his home in Damyang, built this pavilion and took its name as his own pen name. The first pavilion is said to have been a simple building roofed with grass or straw. Song Sun was just over forty at the time and later returned to office for many years, but whenever he was back home the pavilion became a gathering place where scholars of the Honam region debated learning and affairs of state.

A well-known sijo attributed to Song Sun, beginning "Ten years I planned and built a three-room thatched hut", sings of this kind of pavilion life: half the room is given to the clear breeze, half to the bright moon, and since the rivers and hills will not fit inside, he leaves them all around to look at.

Here Song Sun wrote the gasa "Myeonangjeongga", a song of the hills, fields and changing seasons around the pavilion. Together with Jeong Geug-in's "Sangchungok" it represents the gasa tradition of the Honam region, and it stands at the head of a line that leads to Jeong Cheol's later "Seongsan Byeolgok".

The pavilion today

The original building was destroyed in 1597 during the second Japanese invasion, and Song Sun's descendants rebuilt it in 1654. It is three bays wide and two deep, with a room in the centre wrapped on three sides by a wooden floor. Look for the separate posts that prop up each of the four corners of the hipped-and-gabled roof. Inside hang wooden boards carved with poems by visiting scholars. The present building has been repaired many times: the roof was renewed in 1979 and 2004, and the bamboo and scrub around it were cleared so the fields can be seen from the pavilion again. It was designated a provincial monument in 1972.

Tripto tips

• Time needed: 20–30 minutes to climb up, look across the fields and study the poem boards.
• Finding it: the address is 382-11 Myeonangjeong-ro, Bongsan-myeon, Damyang. The pavilion sits on a low hill, so expect a short uphill walk from the road. Thanks to the trees on the hill, fallen leaves pile up around the pavilion in late autumn. Admission is free. The lanes through the surrounding village and fields are narrow, so drive slowly.
• Best time: the fields behind the pavilion are at their best in autumn, when the rice ripens, and in May, with fresh green growth.
• Combine with: Songgangjeong (Jeong Cheol's pavilion) about 4 km to the south, then Sigyeongjeong, Hwanbyeokdang and Soswaewon further south, trace Damyang's pavilion culture in a single drive. The Korean Gasa Literature Museum in Damyang displays the collected writings of Song Sun and Jeong Cheol along with other gasa material.