Pyongyang Bell
Korean Central News Agency of DPRK via Korea News Service (KNS)
Pyongyang, February 27 (KCNA) -- The Pyongyang Bell is one of the national cultural heritage of Korea. It has been preserved well in the colorfully painted bell-house north of the Taedong Gate on the bank of the Taedong River flowing through Pyongyang thanks to the national cultural inheritance preservation policy of the Workers' Party and the government of Korea. It was not certain when the original bell was cast.
The original bell was hanging in Pukjang Pavilion (northern commanding post) of the walled city of Pyongyang. The present one larger than the original one was cast in 1726 after its breakage owing to fire of the pavilion.
The bell is 3.1 meters high, 1.6 meters in diameter of its mouth and 0.3 meters thick. It weighs 13.513 tons.
Carved on the bell are images of Buddha, patterns of cloud, words, etc. Its hook depicts two twisted dragon heads (blue and yellow ones). The bell, one of the big bells in the period of the Ri Dynasty (1392-1910), has been called "famous thing of Pyongyang" for the gracefulness of its shape and beautiful peal ringing far and wide.
By the 1890s, the bell was stroke to open and close all the gates of the walled city at 4 in the morning and 22 in the evening and to inform the invasion by foreign troops, natural calamities, New Year's Day, auspicious and other events. The Japanese imperialists who illegally occupied Korea in the early 20th century banned the Korean people from approaching it, to say nothing of striking it, saying that the bell was the symbol of the Korean nation and its sound was permeated with the nation's soul.
President Kim Il Sung, who liberated the country in August Juche 34 (1945), saw to it to toll the bell on the eve of the New Year's Day that year to bring greater joy of national resurrection to the people.
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