HISTORY OF BOEUN
HISTORY OF BOEUN
Introduce sultural sightseeing
of Boeun.
Boeun. which literally means repaying the favor, was called Samnyeonsan gun, or Samnyeon gum in the Three Kingdoms age (roughly 57 BC - 668 AD).
In 470 (13th year of king Jabi), Silla constructed a mountain fortress wall 4km east of the current Boeun eup to block attacks from Baekje, and named it the Samnyeonsan Seong. According to legend, it was named as such because it was completed in three years (sam-nyeon means three years in Korean).
The time when the administrative area was called Samnyeonsan Gun was also the year 470, according to the historical record.
Then, in 928 (10th year of king Taejo, the first king of the Koreo dynasty), it was renamed as Boryeong. And In 1406 (6th year of king Taejong, 3rd king of the Joseon dynasty), the name was changed again to Boeun. In oral tradition, the reason for it to have been designated as 'Boeun' (bo means repaying, eun means favor) is as follows.
When Taejo, the first king of the Joseon dynasty, founded the dynasty, he had 10 princes, six of them from the first and deceased queen from Han family, and the other two from the current queen from Gang family.
The time came to decide one of the eight princes as the Crown Prince who would succeed Taejo. Taejo, influenced by his wife, favored the last prince Bangseok as the next king. Powerful politicians, including Jeong Do Jeon, who had played the crucial role in establishing the new dynasty, also secretly agreed to support prince Bangseok, and to get rid of six older princes.
However, the fifth son, Bangwon, revolted against such an intrigue, and had powerful men including Jeong Do Jeon, and some of the princes killed by his aides. It is called "the Prices' Riot," struggles among princes for the crown, in history. Afterwards, the second son of Taejo succeeded his father to be the second king, but, soon he yielded his crown to Bangwon, the most powerful among princes. Bangwon became the third king, Taejong. Later, he repented the Prices' Riot,
Especially, he felt guilty for the youngest two princes who had been expelled to a remote place in the riot, and soon, killed crucially by those who supported Bangwon himself.
In the third year of king Taejong, the king asked his personal aides to hold a big Buddhism rite to appease revengeful ghosts of those two princes in the Beopjusa of the Songnisan mountain, famous for an excellent temple since the Silla dynasty.
The king, recovering from his guilty feeling, began to overhaul the local administrative districts. And, when he found out that there were two counties in Choongcheong province which had the same name, Boryeong, he personally created the name of the county where the temple, Beopjoosa was located as Boeun, designed to make it have the meaning of 'repaying the favor'.