Haotaiwang Stele

Inscribed with 1775 Chinese characters, the Haotaiwang Stele, a 6m-tall stone slab that dates from AD 415, records the accomplishments of Koguryo king Tan De (374–412), known as Haotaiwang. The surface is blackened from a botched restoration effort when it was rediscovered in 1877: to remove the moss covering the surface, locals smeared it with cow dung and set it alight. Tan De’s tomb (labelled ‘Taiwang Tomb’) is on the same site.