nanoomi

OK, so coming home from work Friday, I noticed they’d turned on the fountain for Gwanghwamun Square.

I guess that means it’s finally spring. The yellow dust in the air simply confirmed it.

To mark the arrival of this joyous season, I took the camera for an evening walk in Gwanghwamun, the heart of Seoul’s old downtown and a nice place to shoot photos at night.

Gwanghwamun Fountain and Yi Sun-sin Statue

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Between where I stand and the mountain on the horizon is Gwanghwamun. The front gate to Gyeongbokgung has been under renovation since 2006, but the wait is over – and now we can all appreciate Korea’s foremost palace in its entirety.

The event also celebrated Liberation Day (also called V-J day if you’re from the UK), or August 15th as it’s known elsewhere. If you’re from the US, you might be familiar with September 2nd as ‘V-J day’; if you’re studying holidays you don’t get off of work or school, check out this Wikipedia article for more information.

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The Joongang Ilbo reports on the unveiling of Gwanghwamun, including this quote from President Lee:

“Gwangwhamun was blocked and neglected, and the flow of our national spirit was choked off,” he said, adding, “We incessantly endeavored and struggled for the country’s independence.”

Obviously he (or his speechwriter) thinks that destroying the old Government General Building was a good idea, as it was the first step in unchoking the geomantic axis of energy flowing between Seoul’s major mountains that determined where Gyeongbokgung was built when the city was founded. It seems a bit much to call the lines of energy on which the capital of the Joseon dynsasty was built the “national spirit,” but then I’m no speechwriter.

An article from a week or so ago looked at some of the controversies surrounding Gwanghwamun’s restoration (such as whether the sign should be in Hangeul or Hanja) but had some errors, such as saying that “it had been destroyed by the Japanese” 300 years ago (actually, most of the palaces were destroyed by angry mobs of Koreans who burned slave registers, among other things, after the royal family fled north before the Japanese troops arrived). It also says that:

During the Japanese colonial era (1910-1945), the Japanese moved Gwanghwamun to the east side of the palace to give the new General Government Building a clear view down Sejongno in 1927. In fact, the Japanese tried to destroy the gate outright, but Korean intellectuals successfully petitioned for its preservation.

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