LegendThe palace Taejong would not live in
Taejong built this palace because the ghosts of the brothers he had killed walked in the other one.
Source: Popular explanation; the Annals record only that he found the old palace unlucky
The story
Seoul has five royal palaces. The grandest, Gyeongbokgung, stands on flat ground on a straight line, in the Chinese manner. This one, a kilometre to the east, was built five years later at the foot of a wooded hill, and its builders let the hill decide. The gate is at one corner. The path turns right, then left. No two courtyards are square to each other.
Both palaces burned in 1592, when a Japanese army took the city. This one was rebuilt first, in 1610, and the kings stayed. The last of them died here in 1926, and members of his family lived on in one corner until 1989.
Close by, with a page of its own: Gyeongbokgung, Bukchon.
What is here
The palace ticket covers the gate, the throne hall, the living quarters and the unpainted house. The garden behind is a separate ticket for a set time, and the number of visitors is limited.
| Part | Ticket |
|---|---|
| The gate and the stone bridge | Palace ticket |
| The throne hall, Injeongjeon | Palace ticket; seen from the doors |
| The hall with blue tiles, Seonjeongjeon | Palace ticket |
| The living quarters, Huijeongdang and Daejojeon | Palace ticket |
| Nakseonjae, the unpainted house | Palace ticket |
| The garden: the square pond and the library | Garden ticket |
| The garden: the lotus pond and Yeongyeongdang | Garden ticket |
| The garden: the pavilions and the stream | Garden ticket |
If you have one minute
In the great courtyard, facing the throne hall
This is Injeongjeon, the hall of state. The king sat here for coronations, for the new year and to receive the envoys of China. The building you see dates from 1804.
The low stones in two rows across the courtyard are carved with numbers. Each marks where officials of one rank stood: first rank nearest the hall, ninth rank at the back, civil officials on the east, military on the west.
The paving is rough on purpose. Uneven granite does not glare in the sun, and nobody could hurry across it.
Look in through the doors. Behind the throne is a painted screen of the sun, the moon and five peaks. Only a Korean king sat in front of this picture. Hanging from the ceiling are electric lamps, put in in 1908.
Now look at the roof ridge. Along it are five flowers in bronze. They are plum blossoms, the emblem the royal family took when Korea declared itself an empire in 1897.
Things people often get wrong
"It is called the Secret Garden." The garden behind the palace is properly the Huwon, the "rear garden". The name Biwon, "secret garden", came into use about 1900 and spread under Japanese rule. Koreans now prefer Huwon. Both names are on the signs.
"One ticket covers everything." The garden has its own ticket, for a set time, and the number of people is limited. Many visitors find it sold out when they arrive.
"It is a small copy of the Forbidden City." Chinese visitors often expect an axis and symmetry. The first Korean palace has them. This one was laid out to fit the ground, and Koreans consider that its merit. The scale is smaller because a Korean king ranked, in the order of the time, as a prince under the Chinese emperor: his roofs are not yellow and his dragons have fewer claws.
"The buildings are from 1405." Almost nothing is. The palace burned in 1592, 1623, 1803, 1833 and 1917. The gate is from 1609 and the stone bridge inside it from 1411. Most halls are from the 1600s to the 1800s.
People who stood here
- King Taejong (third king of Joseon, reigned 1400–1418; father of Sejong the Great)He built the palace in 1405. He had killed two of his half-brothers on the way to the throne, and people said he did not like to live in the palace where it had happened.
- King Gwanghaegun (reigned 1608–1623)He rebuilt the burned palace and moved in. In 1623 he was overthrown here in a night coup, and the palace burned again. The film Masquerade (2012), with Lee Byung-hun, is about him.
- King Sukjong (reigned 1674–1720)He made the lotus pond in the garden and wrote the poem that is cut into the rock by the stream at its far end.
- King Jeongjo (reigned 1776–1800; Korea's best-loved reforming king)In the first year of his reign he built a royal library on the hill above the square pond and filled it with young scholars chosen for talent, not birth. His father had been starved to death in a rice chest by order of his grandfather, in the palace next door. The television series The Red Sleeve (2021) is about him.
- Crown Prince Hyomyeong (1809–1830)He ruled for his father from 1827 and died three years later, at twenty. He built the plain wooden house in the garden. The television series Love in the Moonlight (2016), with Park Bo-gum, is about him.
- Kim Ok-gyun (reformer, 1851–1894)On the night of 4 December 1884 he and a few friends, with Japanese help, took control of the king, who was living in this palace. They announced a new government and fourteen reforms. It lasted three days.
- Yuan Shikai (Chinese general, later president of China)He was twenty-five and commanded the Chinese garrison in Seoul. On 6 December 1884 he led about 1,500 soldiers through the palace gates, drove out the Japanese guard and ended the coup. He stayed in Seoul ten years as the most powerful man in Korea.
- Percival Lowell (American astronomer, founder of the Lowell Observatory)He spent the winter of 1883 to 1884 in Seoul as a guest of the court. In a pavilion in the garden he took the first photograph ever made of a Korean king.
- Emperor Sunjong (the last ruler of Korea, 1874–1926)On 22 August 1910 his ministers met in a room of his living quarters here and agreed to hand the country to Japan. He lived on in the palace as a pensioner, with motor cars and a billiard table, and died here in 1926.
- Yi Bangja (Japanese princess Masako, wife of the last crown prince, 1901–1989)She was married to the Korean crown prince in 1920 by decision of the Japanese government. After 1963 she chose to live in Korea, in a house in the south-east corner of this palace, and worked for disabled children until she died there.
- Princess Deokhye (the last princess of Korea, 1912–1989)She was taken to Japan at twelve, fell ill there and came home only in 1962. She spent her last years in a small house beside her sister-in-law's. The film The Last Princess (2016), with Son Ye-jin, tells her story.
Go deeper: nine stops, from the gate to the stream at the back of the garden
Stops 1 to 5 are in the palace. Stops 6 to 9 are in the garden, which needs its own ticket.
1. The gate and the bridge
Donhwamun, the gate, was rebuilt in 1609 and is the oldest palace gate in Seoul. A bell and a drum on its upper floor once told the city the hour.
Look up at the corners of its roof. Small clay figures sit there in a row. They are said to be the monk Xuanzang, the Monkey King and their companions from the Chinese story Journey to the West, set there to keep off evil.
Inside, turn right. You cross a small stone bridge of 1411, the oldest bridge in Seoul. In a Korean palace you always cross water before you reach the king. Look over the side: a stone turtle faces south and another beast faces north, to keep bad things from coming up the stream.
2. The throne hall
Turn left through two more gates into the great court. From outside the hall seems to have two floors. Inside it is one tall room.
In 1908 the hall was fitted out in Western style: glass in the windows, curtains, electric light, and a wooden floor in place of brick. It is a Korean throne room dressed for the last years of a court that was trying to look modern.
3. The hall with the blue roof
Next door is a smaller hall where the king met his ministers each morning. Its roof tiles are glazed deep blue. Blue tiles were costly, and this is the only palace building in Korea that still has them.
The presidential residence in Seoul known as the Blue House is named for the same kind of tile.
4. Where the king lived, and a garage
Behind the offices are the living quarters. They burned in 1917. The Japanese administration rebuilt them in 1920 by taking halls from the other palace, Gyeongbokgung, and moving them here.
Look at the front of the first hall. A porch sticks out, wide enough for a motor car to drive under. The last emperor had a Cadillac and a Daimler.
The hall behind was the queen's. Look at its roof. It has no ridge along the top, only a smooth curve of tiles. The usual explanation is that the king, who slept here, was himself the dragon, and a second dragon on the roof would not do.
Through the open doors you can see chairs, a bed and wallpaper in the European taste of 1920. In a side room of this hall, on 22 August 1910, the ministers agreed to the treaty that ended Korea's independence.
5. The unpainted house
In the south-east corner is a group of houses with no paint at all, only the brown of the wood. A king built it in 1847 as his study, with a house beside it for a wife he loved. It looks like the home of a scholar.
Look closely at the windows and walls. Every lattice is a different pattern: cracked ice, tortoise shell, bats, grapes.
The last of the royal family lived here: the emperor's widow until 1966, and the Japanese-born crown princess and the last princess until 1989.
6. The square pond and the library on the hill
A path over a low hill brings you down to a pond. The pond is square and the island in it is round. In the old picture of the world, heaven is round and earth is square.
The small pavilion on the south bank stands with two of its stone legs in the water. Its plan is a cross. The king fished from it.
Facing it, up a flight of steps, is a two-storey building. King Jeongjo built it in 1776. The lower floor held the royal library and the upper floor was a reading room. The gate at the foot of the steps is called the Fish and Water Gate: a king and his ministers should be like fish and water. The king used the tall middle door. Officials used the low doors at the sides and had to bow to get through.
On the east side is a long hall with an open court in front. The final examination for the civil service was sometimes held there, with the king watching.
7. The lotus pond and a nobleman's house
The path passes through a gate cut from a single slab of stone. Its name means "gate of not growing old". Beyond is a second pond with one small pavilion. King Sukjong made it in 1692 and named it for his love of the lotus, which grows clean out of mud.
Next to it, behind a wall, is a house of plain wood with men's and women's quarters and a servants' wing, exactly like the home of a rich official. Crown Prince Hyomyeong built it about 1828. The usual account is that he wanted his father to be able, for an afternoon, to live as a subject did.
8. Pavilions of every shape
Further in, round a third pond, the pavilions become playful. One has six sides and a double roof. One is shaped like an open fan, which is very rare in Korea.
Inside the six-sided pavilion hangs a board written by King Jeongjo in 1798. In it he calls himself "the old man who is master of the bright moon over ten thousand streams". There is one moon, he says, and it shines in every stream. The moon is the king and the streams are his people.
9. The stream and the poem in the rock
At the far end of the garden a spring comes out of the hill. In 1636 King Injo had a channel cut in a flat rock, in a curve, so that the water runs round it and falls in a tiny cascade. The king and his guests sat along the curve and floated wine cups down to each other. Whoever the cup stopped beside had to make a poem. The game came from China, from a famous party of the year 353.
On the rock are three characters in Injo's hand, meaning "jade-flowing stream", and under them a poem that King Sukjong wrote in 1690.
飛流三百尺， 遙落九天來。 看是白虹起， 飜成萬壑雷。
The flying stream falls three hundred feet; it comes down from the ninth heaven far away. Look, and a white rainbow rises; it turns to thunder in ten thousand valleys.
King Sukjong of Joseon, 1690, carved on the rock at Ongnyucheon; our translation
The waterfall he is praising is about knee high.
Beside the stream is a small pavilion with a roof of straw, the only thatched roof in any Korean palace. In front of it is a patch of rice field. Each year the king planted and cut the rice himself, to know what the year had been like for farmers.