ABSTRACT
Description: Ky ngju, a modern country town with approximately 122,000 inhabitants, is Korea's "culture city." Called first Sorabol and later Komsung, the city was the political and cultural capital of the great Silla Kingdom (57 B.C.A.D. 935), which unified the Korean Peninsula in the seventh century. Ky ngju and its environs are still dotted with a wealth of ancient Silla monuments. After Silla fell, the city became a regional capital of the Kory Dynasty and was sacked during the Mongol invasions of the mid-thirteenth century and the Imjin War of 1592 to 1598. UNESCO has designated Ky ngju one of the world's ten most significant ancient cultural cities.
