Korean Palace - from past to present

  Hanok - Korean traditional house Hanok is a traditional Korean house. People in the past didn’t‘ make up things without purpose, which means every detail for house design has its own meaning. This is the key to understand Hanok. Why do you think people began to make a house?  Yes, to protect themselves from outside environment at the beginning, and to have a comfortable and cozy life with their family as techniques and designs develop.  Anyway, techniques of building a house in each country has developed by considering geographic and the climate characteristics. For example, Alaska Eskimo makes Igloo  and in Mongol, people are nomad, therefore they make Ger, portable tent like house  and in many South East Asian countries, people live in a floating house on the water.  Then what is the distinctive features of Korea? Four seasons, especially winter is severely cold, and summer is hot and humid. 70% of land is mountain area which is full of trees and granite stones. Hanok Layout The

  Deoksugung Palace Comparison of the structure of Deoksugung before and now This is one of the five palaces of Korea’s last dynasty, the Joseon Dynasty, which lasted for over 500 years from 1392 until 1910. The dynasty had two critical moments: one the end of the 16th century, and the other at the end of the 19th century. Both of them were related to this palace and to Japanese invasion coincidentally. In 1592, the Japanese army landed in Busan and marched to the capital, Seoul . Prior to their arrival, King Seonjo fled to Uiju , where he stayed for one and a half years. When he returned to Seoul, he had no place to stay because all of the palaces had been burned down during the war. So, he used this place, which was originally the residence of one of  his relative’s families, as a temporary palace. Prince Gwanghaegun succeeded King Seonjo and then remamed this palce “ Hyeongungung Palace”. After he was overthrown by King Injo , it was not used for about 270 years.  Daehanmun