Seoul - King Sejong Statue and Museum

My dad came to Korea to visit me! He arrived late at night on a Thursday and stayed until Sunday morning the following week, so we had a lot of time to do a lot of sight-seeing! The first weekend, we spent all day Friday and Saturday in Seoul.

Our first stop on Friday morning was city hall. Between there and Gyeongbokgung Palace (one of the most popular tourist destinations of Seoul) there are tons of things to see! In addition to the many museums throughout the area, is Deoksugung Palace, Cheong Gye Cheon (the man-made stream), and the famous statues pictured below!


This is a statue of Admiral Yi Sun-shin (이순신). He was a commander of the Korean navy in the late 1500s. He is famous for his many outnumbered victories in in Imjin war against Japan. According to wikipedia... "Military historians have placed General Yi Sun-Sin on par with Admiral Horatio Nelson as arguably the greatest naval commander in history for his undefeated record against seemingly insurmountable odds despite no background in naval training."

At the base of the statue is a small statue of the "Turtle Ship". He didn't invent this ship, rather he took the old design, improved it and employed them in his fleet.


North of the admiral's statue, is a statue of another famous historical man of Korea... King Sejong. He is perhaps the most famous Korean king due to his many successful inventions. Beyond the statue stands Gwanghwamun Gate (광화문), the entrance to Gyeongbokgung Palace (경복궁), and towering in the distance is one of the 3 peaks of Bukhansan (북한산), or Bukhan Mountain, which is the tallest mountain of Seoul. (however the tallest peak can't be seen in this picture)


King Sejong (세종대왕) was the 4th king in the Joseon Dynasty in Korea. Below the statue is an underground museum about the lives and achievements of both King Sejong and Admirl Yi Sun-shin. (the entrance to the King Sejong side is pictured above)

Among other inventions, Sejong is most famous for the creation of Hangul (한글). It was first published and began being taught to the public in 1446. In my next post I'll talk more about the invention and learning of Hangul!


One of the more exiting things to see in the museum underneath the statues (besides the long histories you can read about, of course) is a model of King Sejong's throne: the large wooden seat I'm sitting on in the picture above. The backdrop is a painting, traditionally done on a folding screen, called "Irworobongdo". It includes the depiction of the sun, the moon, and the 5 peaks and was always placed or hung behind the king's throne throughout the Joseon Dynasty.


Also to see, in the Admiral Yi Sun-shin part of the museum, is a 3x scaled down model of a Turtle Ship. Visitors are able to walk around inside the model to see how the inner workings functioned.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Korean Wedding

Image
Two weeks before the event itself, the landlord of my apartment (whom I know very well and am friendly with) messaged me to invite my neighbor and I to his son's wedding! This surprising method of invitation was the first of many things I would learn about Korean weddings. Firstly, there are 2 types of weddings: "traditional" and "western". Traditional weddings are extremely rare, barely anyone opts to have them anymore, but many of its little practices still show through in the Korean interpretation of the "western" wedding. This is the wedding hall in which I attended the wedding. As you can see, it's very showy. The center aisle and the front area is actually a stage. These giant halls are rented for just the ceremony. A business or building that runs them usually has several and on a given day (especially Saturdays), there are usually many weddings going on at the same time, and 3-4 lined up in the same event hall for the same day, get
Read more

Korean Baseball Games

Image
Now that spring is here, one of the fantastic must-have experiences in Korea was a baseball game. And, wow, are they exciting! It's nothing like baseball games I've been to in America. First off, you're allowed to bring in whatever kind of beer and food you want - no having to settle for gross and ridiculously overpriced beer! Secondly is the ambiance. Each side has one of these stages with several dancers and an announcer. The home team gets to advertise theirs on the big screen, but each team is equally loud. They cheer and sing and dance through almost the ENTIRE game. When your team is up to bat, the whole crowd (on that side that is rooting for them) stands and chants, sings and does hand motions all lead by the announcer and the dancers. In this particular game our team, the LG Twins, was losing by quite a bit. But even in the last inning, no one failed to cheer their hearts out at the top of their lungs. If anything, they cheered LOUDER because we were l
Read more

Seoul Trick Eye Museum

Image
Our last day in Seoul for the long May weekend, we went to a couple places. The first, located in Hongdae, was the Trick Eye Museum. It's an amazingly fun place set up purely to take funny and awesome photographs due to the optical illusions painted in the space. Each work is accompanied by instructions and an example photo to show you how to take the best picture illusion. Here are some of the ones we took that worked out the best.   In addition to our purchase of a ticket to the Trick Eye Museum, we received a complementary admission to the ice museum next door. This place was smaller, but it was fun, too. It was SO COLD inside though (obviously it needed to be).
Read more