Gyeongbokgung Palace
With Yuki’s parents, we only had one day in Seoul and we chose to spend the day at Gyeongbokgung Palace. The palace is the largest park area in Seoul and the hub for historic structures. Although the grounds are old, the buildings have been built up and burned down a number of times. Some of the buildings were just finished a year ago in 2013. So the grounds are sort of like a collection of replicas.
As a tourist attraction, it is a good place to wander and explore. It is one of four park areas that you can get a collective ticket for but the other grounds are closed on Mondays (the day we visited Gyeongbokgung) and Gyeongbokgung would be closed tomorrow (Tuesday). Apart from being in the large group of tourist attractions closed on Mondays, Gyeongbokgung has several halls, temple buildings, and historic residences.
This trip, I’m trying to do more video and panoramas as well.
We arrived just before 11 right in time for the changing of the guard ceremony at the main gate. I didn’t quite understand what was happening because the gate began with no guards. Two sets of guards came out of a side door and marched around on the grounds and then one set stayed at the gate while the other marched through and disappeared. The ceremony reminded us of Japan, where our first tourist attraction was Meiji-shrine and we saw the procession of monks so we were off to a good start.
The smog didn’t make photography very easy but what was even worse was that I kept shooting slanted so in post production rotating the images crops them slightly.
The park also has two museums and we wandered through the People’s folk museum. After that, we tried unsuccessfully to visit Bukchon Hanok Village. This is the recreated historic district with traditional style homes. Unfortunately we walked around and through the modern middle without reaching the proper photo locations. This was mostly my fault for not having a map and just wandering. By the end of the wander, everyone was tired and Yuki’s dad wanted to go to Namsan tower.
This is a look out tower on a hill and the guide book says that it is the 10th tallest in the world. It doesn’t look like it to me, intact it looks tiny. To get to the top we took an elevator on an incline, a gondola, and then an elevator. Unfortunately the smog limited our view so it wasn’t all that exhilarating. But, at the end of the day I’ll still take it as a mark off the things I’ve done in Seoul.
More interesting, sales of love locks are popular and there are many trees and railings with tonnes and tonnes of locks. Yuki and I didn’t put a lock on but we did get photos.
We ended the night by walking through Namdaemun market. It’s a street market and the most exciting thing I saw was a building that had burned. It looked like all the product in the bottom stores was highly flammable and helped fuel the fire.
Near to the market is Sungnyemun (Namdaemun) gate. This use to be the Southern gate to the city and the guide book says that it is the number 1 national treasure. Not to be negative, but like Gyeongbokgung, it is closed on Mondays and also happens to be mostly rebuilt. According to the sign board, it was originally erected in 1398 as one of the four main gates to the capital. It was repaired a few times and was quite significant to the original city. When the Japanese came in 1907, they dismantled the walls to either side of the gate and then the remaining structure was damaged during the Korean war. The signboard goes on to explain how from 1961 to 1963 it was taken completely apart and repaired and reassembled but in 2008 an arsonist set fire to the gate almost entirely destroying the roof. Repairs were finished in 2013. From this, it looks to me like the only “original” part of the gate are the brown coloured stones.
I hope to go to the other 3 shrines/palaces on our return to Seoul in two weeks. For now, we’re on Jeju island with more to come…
Thanks Annie for the comment :D
