Some tombs hold their dead, and others hold a whole world. Anak Tomb No. 3 in South Hwanghae Province is one of the great painted tombs of the Goguryeo kingdom, which ruled much of Korea and Manchuria from the first century BC to 668 AD. The chamber, built of stone slabs and covered with plaster, is decorated with murals showing a kitchen, a stable, a smokehouse, musicians and a long procession of soldiers, officials and attendants, some two hundred and fifty figures by the usual count. An inscription dated to 357 AD names a man called Dong Shou, a refugee from the Chinese states, and for years that was taken to be the tomb's owner, though some scholars argue it may have belonged to a Goguryeo king.
The paintings are the reason the site matters. They show clothing, hairstyles, musical instruments, kitchen tools and architecture in a lively, colourful style, so they give historians a window into fourth-century life that few written sources match. The Complex of Koguryo Tombs was inscribed in 2004 as World Heritage, and the Anak tombs are among its main features.
Anak county lies on the rolling farmland of the Hwanghae plain, south-west of Pyongyang, a country of rice fields, apple orchards and low hills, with the Taedong and Jaeryong rivers feeding the soil. Villages line the road, and farmers work the fields by hand or with oxen. This is a region that holds a great deal of historical interest and also a great deal of bitter modern history, with the Korean War battles and later events of memory.
Practical advice must be blunt. North Korea does not allow independent travel, motorcycling or self-driving by foreigners, and visits to the Hwanghae sites are possible only on special arranged tours, if at all. The text of this entry is therefore for armchair travel. If your interest is Goguryeo, the tomb murals at Jian in China and the museum collections in Seoul give a fine introduction.