Seosamneung Hyoreung and royal placenta tombs — free guided walks

Hyoreung and Taesil at Seosamneung in Goyang, Gyeonggi-do, is one enclosure holding Hyoreung — the tomb of Injong, twelfth king of Joseon — a field of 54 royal placenta-burial chambers moved here from all over the country, and the graves of royal family members. Unlike the open part of Seosamneung (Huireung and Yereung), a ticket does not get you in: only people who have booked a session walk it, with a guide, in under two hours. With 30 places per walk even at the height of the autumn colours, it is a way to see a royal tomb in near quiet.

Below, the booking steps and the day's logistics come first, then the five stops on the route in order. Times, capacity and the fee were checked against the Royal Palaces and Tombs Center's booking information for this walk; the history of the opening against the 2023 press release of the Korea Heritage Service (then the Cultural Heritage Administration).

How do you book the Hyoreung and Taesil walk?

• Where — Royal Palaces and Tombs Center site → Integrated reservation (통합예약) → All event bookings → the Royal Tombs (조선왕릉) tab → 'Seosamneung Hyoreung and Taesil' (서삼릉 효릉 및 태실 관람 예약); pick a date and session.
• When — Bookings can be made or changed from seven days to three days before the visit. The window opens just after midnight eight days before.
• How many — 30 per session, first come first served; one person can book for up to four.
• What it asks for — Name and a mobile number (the form's prefix is fixed to Korean 010 numbers) are required; email is optional. You must consent to personal-data use and to being photographed on site.
• What is not accepted — Phone and same-day bookings. Without a booking, or if you are late for the start, you will not be let in.

On the day, set your map app to the Taesil area main gate (201-102 Wondang-dong), not the main Seosamneung address. The gate is about 2 km from the ticket office, so a wrong turn there makes the ten-minute-early arrival hard. Food is not allowed on the walk, and times can change if bad weather makes it unsafe.

Why did Hyoreung only open in 2023?

Because the tomb sat inside the grounds of a dairy-cattle breeding station, with no way for visitors to reach it. The Taesil area opened first, on 16 October 2020, for booked visits; Hyoreung followed on 8 September 2023, after the heritage service negotiated management of part of the land and built a path. That history is also why visitors to Hyoreung sign a consent form for livestock-disease tracing. The 2023 announcement noted that with Hyoreung, all forty Joseon royal tombs were now open to the public.

What should you look for at Hyoreung?

Hyoreung is the double tomb of King Injong (1515–1545), twelfth king of Joseon, and Queen Inseong of the Park clan (1514–1577). Injong's mound was built first, when he died at 31 in 1545; the queen was laid beside him in 1578, which gave it its present form of two mounds side by side within one enclosing wall.

According to the Royal Palaces and Tombs Center, Injong had the shortest reign of any Joseon king — nine months, counting a leap month. On site, look at the stones around the base of the mounds. A stone railing links the two, but only Injong's mound has carved screen stones around it, and those were not there at first: they were added in 1578, when the queen's tomb was built.

Why are there 54 placenta chambers at Seosamneung?

A taesil is where the placenta and umbilical cord of a royal baby were sealed in jars and buried. Each was originally on its own auspicious hill somewhere in the country; in 1928–1929, under Japanese colonial rule, they were dug up and brought together inside Seosamneung. The jars and inscribed stones recovered in a 1996 excavation are now in the National Palace Museum of Korea, so only the steles put up at the time of the move stand on site.

The steles stand in two groups. The black-stone (ocheok) group marks 22 chambers of kings, emperors and crown princes; the pale granite group marks 32 of other royal and imperial family members. The Royal Palaces and Tombs Center notes that the backs of the steles record when each was moved and show where Japanese era names were chiselled off — look at the reverse when the guide stops.

What are the princes' and royal consorts' tombs?

Past the Taesil field are two groups of family graves. The princes' and princesses' tombs hold eight princes and fourteen princesses — 22 graves in one walled plot — moved here from around Seoul and Gyeonggi between 1935 and 1939. Some markers read taesil byeongjang (胎室幷藏), meaning the person's placenta chamber was buried with them.

The consorts' tombs are in two plots: one for consorts of the rank sukui, one for those of the higher ranks bin and gwiin. Moves began late in the colonial period and a second wave followed in the 1960s and 1970s, when urban development displaced graves after liberation.

Why does the walk end at Hoemyo?

The last stop is Hoemyo, the grave of Deposed Queen Yun — consort of King Seongjong and mother of the notorious King Yeonsangun. Forced to take poison in 1482, she was buried at Jangdan in Gyeonggi; when her son took the throne he moved her in 1497 to what is now Hoegi-dong in eastern Seoul and named the grave Hoemyo. After his 1504 purge he raised her to queen and the grave to a royal tomb, Hoereung, but when he was overthrown in 1506 it went back to being a grave. It was moved to Seosamneung in 1969.

The name was demoted, but the stonework from its years as a royal tomb remains: a stone railing (without screen stones), civil and military officials, stone horses, a stone lantern, and stone sheep and tigers — a contrast you notice straight after the plain markers of the princes' and princesses' plot.

The route at a glance

What to check before going in November

• 9–10 November 2026 (Mon–Tue) — The booking list carries a 'no guiding' notice for a Goyang tour-guide training workshop. The 9th is a regular Monday closure anyway; whether the walk runs at all on the 10th is not stated, so ask the Seosamneung office (+82-31-962-6009) first.
• Closed Mondays — The royal tombs close every Monday. If Monday is a public holiday they open and close the next weekday instead.
• Public transport on weekdays only — Village bus 043 from exit 7 of Wonheung Station (Line 3) does not run at weekends or on holidays. From the Seosamneung/Jongma Mokjang stop it is about 20 minutes' walk to the Taesil gate.
• Daylight — The 15:00 walk finishes late in the afternoon. The open part of Seosamneung closes at 17:30 from November to January, so plan the way back in advance.
• Not on this walk — Sogyeongwon, the tombs of Princes Gyeongseon and Gyeongwan, and the tomb of Princess Gyeonghye inside Seosamneung remain closed to the public.

In short: this is a free guided walk past the last Joseon royal tomb to open and a field of 54 placenta-chamber steles you will not see anywhere else. Sessions open a week ahead and cap at 30, so if you have a date in mind, book just after midnight eight days before — and on the day, go straight to the Taesil gate.

Getting there from Seoul, and doing it without Korean

Take Seoul Subway Line 3 towards Daehwa to Wonheung Station (원흥역), and leave by exit 7. On weekdays, village bus 043 runs to the Seosamneung/Jongma Mokjang stop (서삼릉.종마목장입구), from where the Taesil gate is about a 20-minute walk. At weekends and on holidays that bus does not run, so take a taxi from the station and show the driver the gate address, 201-102 Wondang-dong (원당동 201-102), rather than "Seosamneung", which takes you to the ticket office 2 km away. Booking is the harder part: the form is in Korean and its mobile field only accepts 010 numbers, so either use a Korean SIM or eSIM that gives you an 010 number, or ask a hotel or friend in Korea to book for you. The guide speaks Korean; the official booking page mentions no English-language session or printed English guide for this walk, so it rewards visitors who come for the place itself — the double tomb, the steles, the quiet — more than for the commentary.