Gyeongbokgung Palace

In the spring of 1592 a Japanese army landed on the southern coast and reached the capital in about three weeks. King Seonjo left the city at night, in the rain, his court strung out behind him on the road north. Gyeongbokgung burned within days. Who lit the fire has been argued about ever since: some records say townspeople, learning the king had gone, torched the buildings where slave registers were kept; others blame the invading army. Either way the main palace of the Joseon dynasty was reduced to stone foundations, and it would stay that way for roughly two hundred and seventy years. That was the palace's first destruction. It was not the last.

A New Dynasty Wants A New Address

When Yi Seong-gye overthrew the Goryeo dynasty in 1392 and founded Joseon, he also wanted a new capital; a new house would not sit in the old one's palace. The court moved to Hanyang, the city that became Seoul, and the palace was finished there in 1395. Its name, and the names of the halls inside it, were chosen by Jeong Do-jeon, the dynasty's chief ideologue. Gyeongbok comes from an old Chinese poem and means something like "great blessing from heaven". The layout ran on a north-south line between the mountain Bugaksan behind and the city in front: the main gate Gwanghwamun, then the throne hall Geunjeongjeon, then the private quarters of the king and queen further back. Each gate you passed brought you closer to the king and into a slightly higher courtyard.

A Long Gap, Then A Vast Rebuild

After 1592 the dynasty did not rebuild. Kings lived in the smaller palaces nearby and the grounds of Gyeongbokgung stood empty for generations. The man who brought it back was Heungseon Daewongun, who ruled in the 1860s as regent for his young son, King Gojong. Work began in 1865 and a complex of several hundred buildings rose in a few years. The cost strained the treasury; to pay for it the regent issued a new high-value coin, and prices followed it upward. The palace was the royal centre again, but only for about thirty years.

In 1887 the first electric light in Korea was switched on at Geoncheonggung, a residence in the northern part of the palace. The generator, supplied by Edison's company, was cooled with water from the adjacent pond; the warm water killed the fish, and the palace staff gave the lamps nicknames that amounted to "water fire". A dynamo hummed beside a lotus pond inside a ground plan drawn in the fourteenth century.

The same Geoncheonggung saw the palace's darkest night. In October 1895 Japanese agents and the men with them broke into the palace and killed Queen Min, later known as Empress Myeongseong. Within months Gojong fled to the Russian legation, and he never moved back to Gyeongbokgung.

Taken Apart, Piece By Piece

Japan annexed Korea in 1910, and the second destruction began, this time by plan rather than fire. The great majority of the buildings were dismantled, sold or moved. In 1926 the large stone headquarters of the Japanese Government-General was completed between the main gate and the throne hall, across the palace's axis. Gwanghwamun itself was lifted from its position and moved to the east wall. The grounds were used for exhibitions. The message was that the dynasty's axis now ran into the back of someone else's building.

Gwanghwamun burned in the Korean War and was rebuilt in concrete in 1968. The Government-General building survived liberation, served as a government office and later as the national museum, and stood in front of the palace for exactly fifty years.

On 15 August 1995, the fiftieth anniversary of liberation, the Korean government began demolishing it. The spire at the top of the dome was lifted off by crane in front of a crowd. Some argued the building was itself a piece of history and should stay. It went, and for the first time in seventy years the front of the palace was open.

Today

The palace is in the middle of a reconstruction programme that began in 1990. The aim is to rebuild a substantial part of the 1860s complex in timber, to the original plans. Heungnyemun gate returned in 2001; Gwanghwamun was rebuilt in wood on its original spot in 2010, and the stone platform in front of it was completed in 2023. Every few years another building appears, and the programme has decades left; this is one of very few historic palaces still, literally, under construction.

The site is managed by the state heritage agency and sits in the exact centre of Seoul, between government buildings and office towers. The square in front of Gwanghwamun is where the city holds its rallies and protests, so the palace gate still faces politics directly. Visitors in hanbok enter free, and a changing of the guard is re-enacted at the gate at set hours. For a palace that has been wiped out twice, it is not a bad third life.