Seoul is well-known for its many palaces dating back to the Joseon Dynasty. The dynasty lasted from its founding in 1392 to its downfall in 1910 when the Japanese Empire annexed Korea. The palace is located in central Seoul and it served as the main royal palace of the Joseon Dynasty. On Saturday, Daniel, Maya, and I went to Gyeongbokgung to do a little sightseeing. The “Joseon” experience began right when we exited the subway car into the station. This particular station was built to compliment the palace above ground since it was designed with ancient looking pillars and a walkway made of stone and marble (?). We came up right next to the National Museum of Korea and as the entrance came into view, the sight just took my breath away.
This is what we first saw. The main gate is under construction (as is a lot of the palace grounds), this is the gate inside the main gate heungryemun.
Except for the skyscrapers outside the palace grounds, it was like stepping back in time. This is another picture of the entrance, heungryemun.
The people working at this palace are all dressed in traditional Korean clothing. Here is a picture of the the palace guards in full regalia.
We were lucky enough to catch the Changing of the Guards and we caught a little on video. There were speakers that explained the ceremony in Korean, English, Japanese, and Chinese. Take a look:
The palace was originally comprised of 500 buildings and after a few invasions, some reconstruction, and another invasion, only about 10% of the buildings are left today. We got to see the King’s sleeping chambers and we even got to see the King himself! (Here he is ready to hit the sack).
We also saw the Queen’s bedroom chambers and a beautiful garden behind the palace. Here are some pics of the garden and some other things we saw:
Also on the palace grounds were the National Museum and the Korean Folk Museum. The Korean Folk Museum featured an exhibit called 소리, or “sounds.” We learned a lot about the folk life in Korea in the children’s museum where Maya could get some hands on experience with day to day life. There was also an exhibit on the life of the Korean people. It took the viewer through the life of a Korean starting from birth and ending with the death. It emphasized all the traditions and customs linked with all the important stages of a Korean person’s life. Here are some pics from the museum:
We ended up spending about 4 hours there and we didn’t even get to see everything! There was one whole museum we missed. I guess we will have to head back some other time. We decided to get some dinner before we headed home. We walked for a little ways towards the next subway stop and came upon Insadong-gil. Insadong is a street that sells everything traditional. It is like a living museum. We found a nice little mandu (little Asian dumplings) restaurant. We had some really good mandu soup.
All in all, it was a really fun, but tiring, day.
12 comments
Comments feed for this article
September 24, 2007 at 4:03 pm
Nancy
That changing of the guard was much more impressive than the one I saw in Sweden!
Man, you guys look like you’re having so much fun! You make me want to go traveling again!
September 24, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Will aka (Dad) aka Grumpa
W
September 24, 2007 at 5:35 pm
Will aka (Dad) aka Grumpa
Way cool. The place to eat at was my favorite. You need to take more pictures of the food. (just kidding) The palace looks really interesting. I also like the shots of the princes oh wait, that was Maya.
September 24, 2007 at 10:50 pm
Scott
Marquita,
Though I can’t say that the 2000 Revised Romanization is my favorite (I prefer McCune-Reischauer sans diacritics, which is actually the North Korean Romanization), I must commend you on your consistency in using only one system and not some mongrel mix of the two plus your own. Must be the Linguistics/Editing background coming through. Seriously though, even if you don’t publish/blog using McCune-Reishauer you ought to consider learning it. Only publications in and coming out of SK use the Revised Romanization. Most everything else in the world on Korea uses MR, particularly scholarly works. If you’d like, I’ll send you a file explaining MR. The basic difference however is that MR is phonology-based, preserving the actual pronunciation much better, while RR is phonemically-based preserving the phonemes. This is in reality not necessary for foreigners (to whom romanization ought to be targeted) as most can’t read hangul transcriptions of Korean phonemes, or if they can don’t need the romanization anyway. Remember that if we apply RR in all cases it ought to be Gorea not Korea, and that’s just nasty.
Scott
September 25, 2007 at 2:29 am
Marquita Chiquita
Scott, you know, I think you are trying to start some kind of schoolyard scuffle with me on this romanization issue…:D Gosh, we miss your company.
Sure, send me the thing on MR, I am definitely open to that. You are right, all the signs and stuff here in Seoul are in the RR if they are not in hangul. The problem that I saw was that MR was trying to be very accurate and if they know that much about Korean to be able to decipher that out, and all those stupid diacritics, then they probably could just read the hangul…but I guess you just said that. So I guess is SK right in using maybe a less, more user friendly, romanization for foreigners that mostly come here with very little knowledge of Korean, or try and be “scholarly” and make it impossible for them to get around….?
September 25, 2007 at 6:24 am
Aaron
Daniel sent me this link yesterday, so I figured I’d best stop and see what you’ve knocked together over here. Please know, by the way, that you have my permission to use whatever system of romanization you please.
Anyway, it was great to meet and hang out with the three of you the other day. You all made for good company at the gallows.
Aaron
September 25, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Elise
I love all the pictures! Being a fairly un-cultured, English-speaking American, it’s great to get a chance to experience the world vicariously through my friends.
Maya looks like she’s enjoying herself thouroughly! Will you try and immerse her in the language enough to learn it while you are there?
I have another friend that just moved to Saudi Arabia (from Utah) with her husband and kids and is keeping a blog about the experience at http://behindtheinfamousveil.blogspot.com/ . Her blog kind of reminds me of your’s with the theme of experiencing new culture and places.
September 25, 2007 at 10:57 pm
Shaille
Hey Marquita! Sorry I haven’t checked your blog lately, we were in Spokane visiting Casey’s brother and his family. Thanks for all the pics and explanations. It’s going to be really fun this next year to exeperience Korea vicariously through you guys like Elise said.
By the way, how’s the homesickness going? Hopefully you are keeping busy and doing okay. I guess it’s something we all have to go through the first time we move away from the area where our parents are. The first couple months after we moved to Oregon were hard for me too. You happened to move to a foreign country for your first “breaking away” and I’m sure the distance makes it seem harder too. It’ll just take some time to get used to being completely on your own. That’s nice that you have some family there and I’m sure you’ll make some great friends too! We love you guys, take care!!
September 26, 2007 at 4:32 am
Scott
Marquita, I confess I am without question a contrarian at heart. But a schoolyard bully?… well you may be right about that. In truth I wanted first and foremost to acknowledge and commend your use of an actual standard romanization system rather than some eye-fatiguing rho-mahn-ize-ay-shun sorta nonsense. I’m just partial to MR mostly because I like its P’s and K’s over RR’s B’s and G’s. Either way though any systematic approach is better than none.
Scott
P.S. Remember my advice about tracking and homesickness. worked for me anyway.
September 26, 2007 at 4:33 am
Scott
can’t spell today. it’s tracting
September 26, 2007 at 5:27 am
marquita chiquita
Scott;
no worries, no worries. But, seriously I would like to know more about MR.
September 27, 2007 at 5:30 am
Mom
Loved the pictures and explanations! This is a great way of sharing the country with us! Hope to get over there and see some of these things with my own eyes. I’d love to know more about those pagoda shaped roofs. The video was great. Made me remember back to when I saw the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. Hugs to all!