Gyeongbok Palace

We arrived at Gyeongbok Palace which means Shining Happiness one Saturday just in time for the guard changing ceremony. The main gate (Kwanghwa-mun) separates Gyeongbok Palace from one of the busiest areas of Seoul. Gyeongbok Palace was built as the primary palace of the Chosun Kingdom by its founder, King Taejo in 1395, the fourth year of his reign.

It was destroyed during the Japanese invasion of 1592 and was gradually restored over the next 250 years, but starting in 1865, it was rebuilt to its original grandeur by the father of the last  Emperor of Korea.


When Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910, most of the 200 building on the palace grounds were torn down again by the Japanese, leaving only a dozen structures.


(Such a mystery why there is still lingering animosity between the two nations!)

The South Korean Government has spent the past twenty years finishing the job of rebuilding much of what was destroyed and neglected.  The architecture is impressive, not as gaudy as the Chinese nor as subdued as the Japanese: something perfectly in the middle. Certainly makes me believe, as many Koreans do, that the Japanese borrowed heavily from the Korean aesthetic when developing their own.

We spent two and half hours wandering around and only saw about half of the grounds before the weather got the best of us and we left for Insadong, one of the older markets in Seoul in pursuit of lunch.

We will be heading back to Gyeonbok when Spring has sprung for a picnic and a look at the other half we didn't see!

The First Three Weeks

We (Winter, Jae and myself) departed Saturday 2 January 2010 from Honolulu and arrived on Sunday 3 January at Incheon International airport on the heels of the biggest snowstorm to hit the Korean peninsula in 108 years.

I chose a hotel I found on the internet because it was a five minute walk to work, but I didn't realize we had booked ourselves into a hotel that are generally used by "lovers." So it had a really great bathroom, and mood lighting, and it was overheated, but it didn't have anything that a family of three would call a kitchenette. Our stay there was short but quite pleasant: the hotel staff were helpful and attentive.

In any case, Jae found a nice two room villa within a couple of days of our arrival that has a great view, a kitchen, washer, two great bathrooms (no mood lighting) but the house is located  only a few blocks from the subway stop that takes me two stations away to work and back, Winter's school bus stop is only a short five minute walk from the house. (More about finding a school later).

We live in an area called Hannam-Dong which is southeast of Itaewon, a district that is an international ghetto created by the South Korean government to contain "foreigners." Itaewon is the place to go for everything from an "authentic"  Armani to an equally authentic "Rolex."  Itaewon's peak (it is one of several hills around the city) is crowned with the largest mosque in this part of asia which has added to my "situational awareness."

Jae assures me that the government is vigilant about foreigners.