The Palaces of Seoul

     We've now visited 2 of the 5 palaces in Seoul and feel empowered to comment on them. "Why so many palaces?" I hear you asking. When you're king, sometimes you like to change things up, so it was common to have two palaces. Every so often, a palace would burn down- the dangers of building everything out of wood. Then the king would only have one palace, which is one too few palaces for comfort. So a new palace would be built. Not one to let a perfectly good half-burnt palace go to waste, they would also repair the burnt palace. And so the palaces proliferated.

     The main palace is Gyeongbokgung, and the best-preserved palace is Changdeokgung, and as it happens these are the two palaces we've visited.

Gyeongbokgung


The main gate- twice a day visitors can watch an elaborate changing of the guard ceremony. We patiently waited in direct sunlight for this coveted reward.


Pictured: Matt in the blessed shade before venturing out for a closer look at the procession.  We rented a neat audio guide technology that includes a pen and a numbered map.  When you touch the pen to a number it plays the audio recording associated with that place.  Unfortunately, Matt's kept malfunctioning so we shared Karen's earbuds and tried our best to walk in step... believe it or not, we're not as good as the palace guards.


Background: a big drum that gets beaten during the ceremony. Foreground: the sun beating down on Matt just prior to the ceremony.


We scurried from shadow to shadow while listening to our audio guides for context on the many buildings on the palace grounds.


Karen's new LinkedIn profile pic?


Around stop #6 on the audio tour, we saw there were 12 stops total and acknowledged some difficult truths about our own physical stamina. We chose the two remaining stops that seemed the nicest (both of which featured water) and skipped to those.



We got a second wind when we found this building that was open to tour. This would have been the residence of a prince, if I remember correctly. The layout was strikingly different from what is typical in the west- a series of rooms connected in a long chain around a central courtyard. And most importantly, it had a roof.  Most rooms have at least 1 if not more walls open to the air, which makes the house seem very airy.






Matt considers taking a nap in this remarkably small bed.


Changdeokgung

    Going on guided tours has been surprisingly difficult in Seoul. Many are offered - for free! - but they require signing up several days in advance. To be clear, this isn't because they're so popular that they fill up a few days out. The biggest collection of free tours offered by the city literally does not allow you to sign up for a tour less than 3 days beforehand. This seems like a huge challenge for anyone on a shorter visit to Seoul, and in our case, we often aren't sure if we can commit to a tour in three days. But we did manage to sign up for, and attend, one tour of Changdeokgung Palace.  Our guide was extremely knowledgeable and happy to answer many of our questions.




In addition to providing great information about the history of the palace, our guide also knew all the best places to take photos.


An interesting feature of these palaces is the presence of dragon sculptures on the roofs. In east asian mythology, dragons represent water, not fire, so these dragons are meant to protect the buildings from burning down.


Some palaces feature the color yellow. This is notable because yellow was associated with the Chinese emperor, and for a long time no Korean king would use it. When Korean rulers began using the color yellow and calling Korea the "Korean Empire," it marked a perceived decline in China's power and confidence in Korea's autonomy.


Unlike Gyeongbokgung, in which all gates fall in a straight line, Changdeokgung is built into the natural shape of the landscape, bending to accommodate the foothills. This photo does not illustrate this fact, but it is nevertheless true.




This is a part of the Korean floor heating system, ondol, which carries warm air from a fire through pipes under the floor before letting it vent through a chimney.


An illustration of ondol



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