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Published: June 25th 2007
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A meeting
Two creatures worlds apart inspect each other So they say the monsoon season is here. Weeks of flooding and typhoons.
In light of this prediction we decided it would probably be better not to do another weekend hiking to the top of a mountain or camping on the beach. Instead we woke up at a more reasonable hour and caught a bus in to Seoul, to bond with the city for a few days. As it turned out we had fantastic weather for the Whole 3 days. I even had to buy a pair of shorts ($5 for a nice pair at Namdaemun, thank goodness for Asia's crazy market shopping).
The busses took us two hours to get into the city and dropped us at the Gwangwhammun, the gate of the old main palace from the Joseon dynasty, Gyeongbokgung. We were just in time to watch the changing of the guard. It was not the same scale as Buckingham palace, but it was very impressive with a huge drum and soldiers blowing conch shells as they marched. We then met up with our tour guide who showed us around the intricately designed palace buildings. Can you believe that the palace was built with an underfloor
Changing of the guard
In front of the renovations at the front gate heating system over 700 years ago!
The most interesting part of the tour was at the end when we asked her when the Dynasty came to an end. A bit of history...
Apparently when the Japanese invaded Korea in 1910, they took the crown prince, the heir to the throne, was taken across to Japan. There he was married to a Japanese princess in an act symbolising the unity of the two nations. But there were more sinister intentions. This specific princess had been diagnosed as unable to bare children by the royal physician. The idea was to end the royal Joseon bloodline.
To everyone's surprise the princess bore not one, but two sons! This messed up things for the Japanes, especially the royal physician, who commited Seppuku (honourable suicide with a knife to the stomach). At the end of WWII, the Japanes government gave Korea it's independence. When the first democratic government was elected, the prime minister was worried that the people of Korea would want to return to their traditions of Monarchal rule. He confiscated almost all of th belongings from the royal family, so that they became very poor.
The last remaining prince, Royal Guards
The new guards in place after the ceromony left to America where he studied at an ivy league university. In the US he married an American girl, and returned several years later to Korea to accept a professorship at Seoul National University. The "impure" marriage came under a lot of pressure from the royal family and eventually the couple divorced. Two years ago the professor died of cancer, ending the bloodline that had ruled Korea from 1392 - 1910.
...After such a sad story, we went to explore the National Folk Museum, on the Palace properties. After learning a whole lot about traditional water pots we realised that it was 5pm and only Cath had had breakfast. As interesting as I'm sure the rest of the exhibits were, we would not have lasted any longer.
With the last of our energy we managed to reach a small
galbi ("Korean barbecue", see
Ilsan) restaurant. Within minutes we had pork sizzling on hot coals at our table and were filling our mouths with the yummy side dishes. Although the ajumma who ran the place had to butt in a few times, we managed to get the meal down quick enough to get our tolerances back to a safer
Looking in the main gate
Inner gate to king's living area in the background level.
Magies vol, ogies toe Just about rolling out of the restaurant, we realised that another couple of hours on our feet was never going to compare with the thought of a
jjimjilbang at the end of the day. After getting lost in a giant book store for about an hour and ambling along some of the evening market streets, we found directions to a nearby jjimjilbang two storeys under ground.
As in Busan, we spent about an hour doing the Goldilocks act with pools saunas of different temperatures until we were thoughroughly pruned up and felt like microwaved marshmallows. Then we met on the girls&boys level, found a quiet corner, and lay down on the bare wooden floor with our small, hard pillows to sleep like babies...erm... baby logs.
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