Taking a trip is always giving me some strong feeing of the excitement.
Thinking on traveling around makes me happy. In this travel, I prepared for several days of journey on the southwest area of Korea.
The first destiny was Byeokgol-jae reservoir which was made in early age of Baekje Dynasty about 1800 years ago.
This Byeokgol-jae was believed as an one of the oldest reservoir in Korean peninsular.
It was recoded that the reservoir Byeokgol-jae was build in 330 AD.
The reservoir was very important in ancient kingdom, because the rice cultivation was a economic basis of the ancient kingdom.
At that time, King must’ve guaranteed the circumstances of the agriculture for charging a tax.
So managing the water was the key task for all Kings.
If he failed to managing the water, king could be a sacrifice of the ceremony for the Heaven.
Unbelievable ? But it was true.
The reason why I tried to visit this area was that my ancestors in Goryeo dynasty had lived in this area for several hundred years. I found out this in my family history book. So I’d like to look at this area with my own eyes. But there was no record of the exact location where my ancestors had lived on.
Even though it was impossible to find out exact place, it was nice for me just to look around there.
In my guess, my ancestors must’ve some close relationships with the reservoir of Byeokgol-jae.
When I got there, there were nothing special reminding me of the reservoir.
There was no reservoir anymore. The only things remained were the bank and the old water gate.
The reservoir was filled up and turned into the field.
I took some photos thinking of the disappeared reservoir and the life of that time.
It was so curious how they had lived at that era.
The old watergate was the only preserved trace of the reservoir.
But now I could see only the reeds swaying in the wind, the trace of the bank and the old water gate.