Tumuli Park
It didn’t take long for us to get to Tumuli Park. The place is one big open air museum. Outside of the park, we can already see small hill-like mounds. Irene explains those are tombs, but if you have to be technical, those ARE tumuli. I wager that no one among us knew that word at that time or ever. It’s certainly not a word we use often. A tumulus (Tooh-Myu-leus) is a mound of earth over a burial site. Plural of tumulus is tumuli (tooh-myu-lai) according to Merriam-Webster dictionary. Hence, the park in English is called Tumuli Park. Irene, our guide, pronounce it as Teu-moo-lee. Understandable, since we Pinoys would also pronounce it that way too due to Tagalog education. Heck, there’s plenty of people who pronounce "stimuli" similarly. The park goes by another name in Korean, Daeneung-won.
I only found out about this after I got back from the trip. I decided to make some research about the places we traveled. I would have researched before the trip had I have the itinerary beforehand.
During the tour of Tumuli Park, one of our members in the group we got to be good friends with, Ryneth, was shocked and surprised at the great divide between North and South Korea. James and I explained the post-World War 2 history of Korea. Especially me, being a bit of latter 20th century history buff. Irene overheard us and was excited and pleased we know a bit of Korean history. Although I did explain I was more familiar with post-WW2 Korean history. Had I been able to research about the places we will be going to, I would have appreciated the context and significance even more. Then Irene would have been even more impressed!
The tumuli looks like a more scattered version of Bohol’s Chocolate Hills. Irene gets that comment a lot from Philippine tourists.
The same time we went inside the park, students from different schools came as part of their field trip. We entered the Cheonmachong tomb, which had a long queue. No pictures allowed inside. Some of the tombs in the park have been excavated. Cheonmachong have very important Silla artifacts. The tomb is now designed for tours and hollowed in. Inside, it is a circular chamber with the artifacts on display. At the end of the room is a replica of the burial chamber. The original has since been removed and preserved elsewhere.
Hanja is used to identify the gates we enter into. Below is Tumuli Park gate written in Chinese Hanja (I’ll come back for the pronunciation as my written Chinese is very rusty) but it literally says "Great Tombs Park" hence, Tumuli Park ;and Cheonmachong in Chinese Hanja written as "Tien Mah Chia"
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Now that we’ve seen the most important parts of the park, we proceed to the exit and to the National Museum…
