From Yonhap.
Yeosu's Hyangiram hermitage (향일암) had its Main Hall and several other buildings destroyed by fire early this morning, reduced to a lump of ash according to the 여수신문.
From Yonhap.
What contributed to the destruction is that it's not easily accessible to fire fighters: you have to climb 291 steps to the hermitage, along a path which can be extremely narrow at times.
Hyangiram is one of the most popular spots in the area for viewing the first sunrise of the new year because of its location on Geumosan above the South Sea, and for what it's worth it was among the best places I've visited in Korea. You can read more about Hyangiram via this KBS World profile.
11 comments:
thats really unfortunate :(
My wife and I went there for our first Christmas when we'd just started dating. It was one of those magical trips when you're just falling in love. That's too bad. In my mind this is a bigger tragedy than 남대문 burning down. I thereby dub it the Korean California Wildfires of 2009.
Thanks for sharing, Aaron.
A few more pictures in this gallery from KBS:
http://news.kbs.co.kr/society/2009/12/20/2013701.html#/
*sigh* What unfortunate news.
Sad news.
That's awful. I hope they can reconstruct the buildings relatively faithfully.
Read your posting about Hyangiram with dismay. Wanted to visit it before but because of time constraints, opted to visit Namhae instead. Sigh - the road not taken. It reminds me of another hermitage in Naksan which fell victim to fire a few years earlier.
ajumma
Holy crap, what?
(Yes, months later, I'm wandering in.) My first year in Korea was spent teaching at a university in Yeosu and, yes, I definitely walked up to Hyangiram. Good Lord, that is really, really sad.
It was one of the places I'd swore I'd get to when I came to Korea to visit again. :(
Months out, do you know if there are plans to rebuild it? Granted it won't be the same, but that just breaks my heart.
They most certainly will rebuild it, and they expect it to be finished before the 2012 Expo.
http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=102&oid=001&aid=0003185669
It's apparently still open to the public, and if you search through the Yeosu category about two weeks later you'll see they had tens of thousands of people there. I'm not sure how safe it is,though. Just last week someone died when they fell:
http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=102&oid=001&aid=0003287707
Did a drunk angry about parking tickets burn this down too?
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