Planned New City, Buyeo

Why do you think such a common-looking stone is exhibited here at the museum? You can see that there are two Chinese characters engraved on this stone. They are presumed to mean ‘front,’ and the artifact is a marker stone that refers to an administrative region of Baekje.

In the spring of 538, the capital of Baekje was relocated from Gongju to Buyeo at the command of King Seong. The preparation and planning of the new city was meticulous. It is thought that two million people worked for over ten years to design and construct the city.

The new capital was divided into five different administrative regions. The houses of the city were laid out neatly in a checkerboard pattern, and large roads were constructed that extended in all four directions - north, south, west and east - from the palace, thus providing easy access for carriages. Ditches were dug next to the roads as an early kind of drainage system designed to collect excess rainwater and keep the roads passable in the event of heavy rainfall.

This well-organized system was only known in historical records for a long time. However, this milestone standing for one of the five administrative regions was fortunately discovered, and the advanced system of Buyeo was proved to be true.