비원을 구함
This weekend I visited ㅈ in 서울. The original plan was to go to 비원 (the secret garden.) However, though I knew about where it was (duh, 종로) I did not know exactly where it was. Nevertheless, I did know where a giant park-esque area was so ㅈ and I went there (sidenote: despite being Korean, ㅈ has no idea where anything is in 서울. Moreover, even if she knew where it was she could never find it because her sense of direction is bad enough that getting lost in a small square room is always a possibility for her. The result is that when we are 'looking' for something we often find other things that seem more interesting on the way and never make it to the original destination. But back to the story.) The big park area was actually a park that was full of old people but behind the park (where I thought 비원 should be) was what turned out to be a palace that was a shrine for all the Kings of the Joseon period called 종묘.
As we traveled through there I began with the questions. ㅈ did the best she could, but, even after stopping and drawing in the dirt, we both ended up confused. Turns out I was asking questions about the linchpins of Korean history and since I had nothing to go on I asked questions about everything I did not understand ("ok, but why did he do that?"), which was everything. ㅈ was patient and also became curious when she realized she did not know the reasons for why many things happened either. So we started asking the 아저씨s that were everywhere. We left confusion in our wake. We wandered our way across a bridge and discovered 창경궁. After exploring there we ate and went off in search of 비원 again.
This time we ended up finding 운현궁 instead. Everyone was sitting up for a concert that was going to be that evening. In one of the 한옥 buildings two groups of children in 한복 were practicing traditional Korean etiquette. We watched for awhile and then wandered over to where the opera singers were doing the mic check for that evening. ㅈ wanted to see the show but in the end we went back early.
We ended up sleeping 12 hours. The next morning we set out for, you guessed it, 비원. On the way we decided to look at a palace we had passed the day before. The problem was this palace had to be seen as part of a tour group. The next English tour was an hour and a half away so we took the Korean one. It wasn't until the tour started that we realized that this ended up being the palace with 비원. It is called 창덕궁 and it turns out to be very significant. Both of us felt a real sense of awe to be walking in the footsteps of Kings looking at the places where the fate of the Korean nation was once decided. We finished the Korean tour and returned to the starting point just as the English tour was beginning and since I still had questions we joined that one too and saw everything again. The English tour left out a lot that was in the Korean tour and explained things that did not need explaining. Also, the English tour was full of some odd people. (There was an American woman who was at least 25 but who carried a teddy bear with her the whole time. ㅈ and I kept looking at each other and asking "대체 왜 인형을 가져 있어? 너무 이상해!") After that we wandered around 인사동 in animated conversation about Korean history and listening to the 사물놀이. ㅈ filled me in on the more sensational stories of Korean history (such as the King who could not bring himself to murder his son, so he nailed him into a crate for rice and watched him die for 8 days.)
Long story short (oops, too late for that) I have since become interested in answering all the questions that I could not answer last weekend. I find that I am especially drawn to reign of the last King/first Emperor 고종태황제. So much was happening then, both in and to Korea, that to sort it all out I have been writing my own history. However, I am finding that there is more that I need to understand, particularly about China, Russia and Japan. For those interested, the Joseon period was a mess. Rarely did Kings die with proper heirs, half the Kings abdicated and power struggles were common place; all in all, not unlike current Korean politics.