[Hampyeong’s Scenery 7] National Treasure No. 1372 designated as one of the national cultural assets
Hampyeong Gomakcheon Stone Bridge
- Classification: National Treasure No. 1372
- Name: Hampyeong Gomakcheon Stone Bridge
- Classification: ancient structure / traffic & communication / traffic / bridge
- Quantity/size: 1 (one)
- Designation (registration) date: March 14, 2003
- Location: 629 Gomak-ri, Hakgyo-myeon, Hampyeong-gun, Jeollanam-do
- Period: Goryeo Dynasty
The stone bridge crosses the Gomak Stream flowing into the boundary between Hampyeong-gun and Naju City. Legend has it that Buddhist Master Gomak, a Buddhist priest from Beopcheonsa Temple in Muan, built this bridge with his Taoist sorcery in the fourteenth year of King Wonjong’s reign in 1273 during the Goryeo Dynasty.
A footbridge (length: 20 meters, width: 3.5 meters, height: 2.5 meters), finished with checkered floor-style plates on five piers, is connected with 7 to 8 meter-long stone road on its east side, along with the newly built concrete bridge cleaving through the water.
Gomakcheon Stone Bridge is a footbridge that also features a headpiece frame structure of wood furniture. The bridge’s checkered floor-style plates show relevance to wooden architecture at the time. Particularly, a single span of its western edge, using checkered floors as a boarded floor for repairing a bridge, show varied forms of plates. For a bridge foundation, pure wooden piles were densely hammered at the lower part of the bridge by delicately placing large-size, rectangle cut stones on the piles preventing rapid waters from sweeping away the bridge. Its strongest bridge foundation has thus far withstood flooding. Densely hammered wooden piles were used to support underwater and underground bases for ground reinforcement, placing broken stones around the bases at equal intervals to prevent rapid waters from sweeping away the bases in advance.
Gomakcheon Stone Bridge, estimated to be built between 1390 and 1495, is Korea’s oldest surviving, intact footbridge using extraordinary construction methods and holding its historical significance as a stone bridge.