Outcomes Beginner Reading Text

Page 102 Unit 11: A very short history of Suwon Hwaseong

A VERY SHORT HISTORY OF SUWON HWASEONG

Suwon Hwaseong is a big fortress in Korea. It is thirty kilometres from the capital city,
Seoul. The fortress was built for King Jeongjo in the 1790s after his father died. The king
didn’t like Seoul because his father was killed there, so he took his father’s tomb to Suwon.
He wanted to protect the tomb, so they built the fortress around it. But they also built schools
and houses inside the walls, because King Jeongjo wanted to make Suwon the new capital
city. People started living in Suwon, but it never became the capital.

In the 1950s, there was a war in Korea. Some parts of the fortress were damaged, so the
government spent a lot of money after the war to repair the walls and buildings. After that,
Suwon Hwaseong became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

(a tomb = place where you put a person’s body after they die)