At the end of last year the Pyongyang Municipal National Heritage Preservation Station unearthed the Sojin Wall in Sangam-ri, Kangnam County, Pyongyang, in cooperation with a research team from the Archaeological Institute of the Academy of Social Sciences.

The wall is located on a hill about 1.2 kilometres northeast of the seat of Sangam-ri. It was built by the 400-odd-strong volunteers army led by Rim Jung Ryang (1542-1606) around the hillside during the Imjin Patriotic War (1592-1598).

Now the wall remains in the eastern and northern sections of the hill, which are higher than the surroundings, while the parts of the wall in the western and southern sections, the lower parts of the hill, disappeared during land realignment, with traces remaining in some of the sections.

The wall is about 375 metres long in the east, 370 metres in the west, 140 metres in the south and 125 metres in the north. It is approximately 1 010 metres in circumference and 3 metres wide at the bottom. The height of the remaining wall is about 1 metre.

The northern and western parts of the wall form a sharp slope and the southern part declines gently. In the past the area was called Jiksan or Orumjinjae.

Orumjinjae, also called Pinjaengi, refers to an ice fence located on the eastern tip of Jiksan. During the Imjin Patriotic War the local volunteer troops hastily extended the height of the wall by making a fence on it. To make the fence, they put rice hulls and water inside frames made with sorghum stalks gathered from farm fields and then froze them, because stone was scarce in the area.

Water is still running along the moat that used to be in the eastern part of the wall.

According to the survey, the middle part of the western section of the wall is comprised of two layers on bedrock. They built a foundation of two tiers on the lower layer and then the wall body of several tiers on it before they covered it with soil to form a steep gradient.

Ceramic and earthenware fragments in the period of the feudal Joson dynasty (1392-1910) were unearthed inside the wall that is now used as farmland and from the wall.

Sojin Wall was so named because the Rim Jung Ryang-led volunteers army took the western part of the three positions established in the Junghwa area. At present Tongjin Wall is preserved as a national relic in Junghwa County, North Hwanghae Province.

During the Imjin Patriotic War the volunteers army armed themselves by making weapons with farming tools and made steady surprise attacks on the enemy troops active in the southern part of the Taedong River and between Pyongyang and Hwangju.

In early winter of 1592, the first year of the war, they allured thousands of enemy troops towards the earthen wall and killed them all, thus wining the first great victory since the war began.

As such, Sojin Wall is a valuable historical site associated with the exploits of Pyongyang volunteers in the period of the Imjin Patriotic War.

Two hundred metres away from the western part of the wall there stands the Uiryolsa Shrine built in 1597 to convey the exploits of 13 patriotic martyrs including Rim Jung Ryang and Yun Pung, the commanding officers of the volunteers army, and hold memorial services for them every year, a tomb of Rim Jung Ryang and its tombstone, and a monument dedicated to the 13 patriotic martyrs and inscribed with the official titles conferred on them after their death.

The Sojin Wall is registered as a national preservation relic.

Jang Suk Yong, section chief of the Pyongyang Municipal National Heritage Preservation Station