India's Taj Mahal and Korea's Donggreung: Similarities

Two historical land mark: Taj Mahal from India and Donggureung from South Korea (Both are tombs represent different culture, power, history and listed as Heritage Site by UNESCO)

In Korea whenever, I meet to some of the Korean friends, at the first meeting they remind me about indo curry and then obviously Taj Mahal. No doubt, Taj Mahal has become the most prominent land mark of the India.

Taj Mahal is nothing but a tomb, built by Indian emperor Shah Jahan in the memory of his wife Mumtaz Mahal. In this tomb, both Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal are buried here.
This is the example of finest architecture of Mughal period (1526 ~ 1707) in India. It is located in the bank of river Yamuna. It was designated as world heritage site on 1983 by UNESCO. You can find detail here.

In the very similar way, Donggureung is the tomb of Joseon dynasty (1392 ~ 1897). It is the burial place of six kings, nine queens and a posthumously declared king and queens in nine mounds.

Interestingly, both tombs are associated with two big dynasties from Asia, one from South Asia and another from East Asia. However, Mughl empire was very big in compare to Joseon empire. Mughal empire ruled India between 1526 to 1707 about 2 centuries and Joseon dynasty ruled from 1392 to 1897 about 5 centuries.

There is one common ground, both dynasty had burial system and Taj was built in the memory of love but Donggureung was built as a tradition. Both site has best location and selected after in-depth analysis.

I must say that Taj must be very expensive affair with respect to the material, architectural detailing and other aspects.

Even though, this writing is incomplete comparision, but I can say with firm believe that Donggreung presents history of 5 centuries of one of the great dynasty of Korea, Joseon. It possesses many lessons for next generation if and only if we can derive from them. One thing I can indicate the landscape setup, a design system beside their philoshopy all are shaping climate friendly builtup area. At the lowest, we can use this though and idea for today's world of climate change.