In this tomb general Gim Yu-sin (595-673) rests in peace. This tomb is the original earth-mounded tomb, located at the top of the southern mountain ridge extended from Mt. Songwha, Chunghyo-dong, Gyeoungju.
General Gim Yu-sin was the great grandson of Guhyeoungwang, the last king of Geumgwangaya. He was a member of hwarang -the elite youth military corps- at the age of 15. He excelled others in his intellectual capacity and martial art. Whenever the nation had met hardship, he made a great contribution to overcoming it.
In 660, General Gim Yu-sin helped Taejong Muyeolwang annex Baekje to Silla, and in 668 he helped Munmuwang annex Goguryeo to Silla.
After that, he drove the Chinese Tang forces from the Korean peninsula. During the reign of Munmuwang, he was awarded the highest government rank Taedaegakgan, and posthumously he was awarded an honorary title "Heungmudaewang" (king) during the reign of King Heungdeok.
The circumference of the tomb's mound is 50m. The tomb is 18m in diameter, and 5.3m high. the bottom of the tomb is encircled by 1.2m high stone panels on which the 12 oriental zodiac animals are carved.
Here's one of the zodiac animals -the horse- since I was born in the year of the horse.
These tandem cyclists picked the right moment to fall over. It turned what would have otherwise been an ordinary "spring-sunlight-filtering-through-the-trees-amongst-the-traffic" type photo into more of a "spring-sunlight-filtering-through-the-trees-amongst-the-traffic-while-amateur-cyclists-perform-slapstic" type photo.
I was trying to take a picture of the people taking pictures in amongst the spring flowers. Unfortunately the light was starting to go, and it came out rather blurry. This gives the picture a sort of impressionistic look. I now realise that the impressionists must have just had blurry vision.
The movies are compressed into a .zip file. Once downloaded you can unzip them using Winzip, or if you have Windows ME or XP, windows can unzip them without Winzip. Let me know if you have any hassles.
Cycling at the entrance to the general뭩 tomb (6.2mb)