Gyeongbokgung Palace

Approaching Geunjeongjeon, the main throne hall of Gyeongbokgung Palace, the scale surprises: a vast wooden platform raised on double stone platforms, the whole composition radiating Joseon court authority and restraint.

The exterior hides almost everything. Behind the initial facades of ochre-plastered walls and heavy timber gates lies a palace complex that grew over nearly five centuries from its 1395 founding under King Taejo as the main seat of the new Joseon dynasty.

Its golden age came under Sejong the Great, who reigned from 1418 to 1450 and whose genius gave Korea Hangul — the native alphabet still in daily use — a project reportedly developed within these very halls. The palace flourished as the administrative centre of a Confucian state that saw itself as a model of ordered governance.

What followed was destruction and long neglect. The Imjin War of 1592 burned the palace to the ground; plans to rebuild faltered for lack of funds, and Gyeongbokgung lay in ruins for nearly 300 years. Restoration came only in the late 19th century, and then came Japanese colonial rule.

From 1910 to 1945, Japan systematically demolished and shipped away the palace's structures — almost all of the original 500 buildings were sold off or demolished. By the time Korea was liberated in 1945, only about 40 pre-colonial buildings remained standing, surrounded by Japanese colonial government buildings.

What you see today is partly ruin and partly reconstruction. The ongoing Second Gyeongbokgung Restoration Plan, begun in 2008 and scheduled to run until 2045, is painstakingly recreating demolished buildings on their original footprint, using historical records and archaeological evidence as guides.

The National Folk Museum and the National Palace Museum of Korea occupy the former Japanese Government-General building site within the palace compound — a deliberate architectural repossession of stolen ground. A free changing-of-the-guard ceremony is held twice daily at Geunjeongjeon, as it has been for centuries. Those wearing hanbok enter free of charge. The Hyangwonjeong Pavilion, its curved bridge shipped to Japan in 1911 and returned in 1993, stands rebuilt in its original pond.

The palace's relationship with the surrounding city has changed dramatically across its history. During Joseon's peak, the area north of the palace was a dense residential and commercial district serving the royal court. After decades of post-war neglect and then colonial erasure, the restoration project is slowly re-peopling the grounds with reconstructed buildings that give a physical sense of what a Joseon government quarter once felt like. The National Folk Museum, spread across multiple traditional-style buildings, uses reconstructed interiors and extensive collections to show how ordinary Koreans lived across different periods — an essential complement to the architectural spaces. Walking from Geunjeongjeon toward the eastern side of the grounds, past the Geonjeong Gate and the large parade ground, the scale of the original complex becomes clearer: this was not merely a palace but the administrative and ceremonial centre of a capital city.

It is the oldest and largest of Seoul's five Joseon-dynasty palaces and the direct symbol of Korean royal heritage.

The current reconstruction represents one of the most ambitious heritage projects in East Asia — deliberately undoing the spatial violence of Japanese colonial erasure.

The National Folk Museum and National Palace Museum on-site provide contextual depth that makes the physical ruins legible.