22 August, Jeonju

Another blisteringly hot day, but a dry heat, a Mt. Isa sort of mid-summer day.

Despite the heat we strolled, very slowly, the kilometre or so to the Pungnammun Gate and some restored sections of the old city wall. 

The old city wall once enclosed many royal palaces, halls and monuments associated with the Joseon Dynasty. In the centre of the Gyeonggjijeon Hall complex we came upon a small, rather unremarkable, raised hall that we wouldn’t have bothered to climb up to, unless we had seen a few locals climbing down.

 Inside was a small archive of the Annals of the Kings of the Joseon Dynasty. We assume they were copies, but the very fact that the originals are somewhere in a more secure storage is incredible. These documents, the daily record of events, the historian’s drafts and the diaries of the Royal Secretariat, were prepared by court mandarins, reviewed and revised before printing and were not shown to the King during his reign, nor to the next king. All materials used in their preparation were destroyed, so they were designed to chronicle the real story of the King’s rule.

Alongside the royal halls and monuments is the Hanok Village. Largely restored, the village does have some attractive alleyways, but as with some other “heritage villages” we have seen, the heritage nature has been consumed by tourist outlets.

Just beyond the Hanok Village, we climbed steep narrow roads to a small urban village that has encouraged artists to paint murals on the walls of its houses. It was all a little “untidy” and the art very average, but an interesting way for a small, fairly poor, part of the city, to secure its survival.

As we move closer to the end of our trip, we are developing some understanding of the long history of Korea. There is evidence of human habitation on the Korean peninsula since Paleolithic times but no evidence that these people are related to the current “Korean race.” The Dangun Jaseon dynasty is identified as loosely covering the period, 2300 BC to 200 BC. Most of this period was characterised by invasion and tensions with the Han Chinese and the Mongols. From around 200 BC, the southern part of Korea was under the sway of various Kingdoms, including the Silla, Gaya and Baejke kingdoms. By 700 AD, the kingdoms had been consolidated under the Silla Dynasty. The Unified Silla period lasted for around 500 years, then the Goryeo and Joseon dynasties dominated until around 1910, when a period of Japanese occupation ravished Korea until the end of the Second World War in 1945. From 1945 until 1948, Korea was under American military governance and, after the Korean War, the country was split along the 38th parallel, creating the divided nation we know today.