Our tour guide - we all learned a great deal about the history of Korea at this Palace, especially about the Josen Dynasty. Since it's a food course - a little detail about the king's food. He had 2 royal court ladies who fed him and one royal court lady who was a taster. Her job was to taste his food in case someone tried to poison him. I'm sure she hoped that he was popular!
What a bright and beautiful day it was to tour a palace. I enjoyed all of the art work and fine lined painting that was done to restore the palace to it's former glory. There was so much to look at it was hard to take in such a beautiful view. I have always found other countries' ancient civilization interesting as the USA is a pretty new country in comparison. The tour guide had the most beautiful parasol as well!
ReplyDeleteBrittnee Jordan
I really loved the artwork and the fine lined painting too! It was so gorgeous! I thought it was very fascinating to learn about South Korea's royal history.
Delete-Erin Adair
I really enjoyed this palace tour. The architecture and artistry was breathtaking. It was so intriguing to learn about South Korea's history in this beautiful palace. I also loved how our tour guide wore a traditional dress. My favorite part of this tour was looking at all of the detailed paintings in the palace.
ReplyDelete-Erin Adair
I was so amazed by the detailed architecture of the palace. It was so beautiful. I could only imagine how long that took to do. I never would have imagined that the king and queen both had their separate bedrooms. Getting a chance to see the kings throne was incredible, everything was just so beautiful.
Delete-Cecilia Nunez
Yes! I agree. And seeing the throne so close to the ground -- I wonder if it was to keep the king warm during the winter months, since the fireplace heated the floor.
Delete-- Addison Rhea
I had done research on this palace before we had gone to visit it, so much of what the tour guide had said I had already studied. However, I was overly surprised that much of the palace was not original, that it had been restored after the destruction of the Japanese Occupation. Realizing this made it a bit more unexciting, but the architecture was still fascinating.
ReplyDelete-- Addison
no wonder they hate japanese so much after all the destruction and humiliation
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ReplyDeleteThe Gyeongbokgung trip probably is the most defining experience I had among all. I have great interest in the culture and history of my own country, and this is the first time for me to visit an old vassal state of ours. I still hold very strong pride of my ancestors, not long ago(about 124 years) we were still the strongest country in the world, not because of our military power but through our civilization and culture. That is also one of the most important reason that we didn’t stand a lot of chances against western industrialized new army. When more and more advanced killing machine are being invented in Europe, out people were still busy designing parks and palaces. However, even we didn’t win the war, our people still proudly created one of the greatest civilization where its influence spread to whole east and southeast Asia. Walking in 景福宮 of Korean, I feels a lot like walking in a tiny version of 紫禁城(the forbidden city). I remember Kelsey told me that was the most racist thing she ever heard when I was saying something similar to her at the bar the other night. I don’t know about this, I feel like I was just telling the truth and what I was thinking. The way Korean build their palace is the way we used too so I was pretty familiar with all the structure and techniques they used. I was a little bit angry and feel ridiculous when I heard they created the seven-clawed dragon when they rebuilt the palace. In eastern myth, five claw dragon is the highest level and it is the representative of the will of Heaven. That is also why the central country government use that as their symbol while vassal state like Korea should use four. Anyway, it is a very interesting fact in Asia that how China, Korea and Japan treat history so differently.
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