18 Sep 2009, Posted by Matt in Seoul, Video, 10 Comments

Seoul’s Iconic 63 Building

For over 20 years, the curved pink glass tower known as the 63 or yooksam Building (육삼빌딩) has stood on the eastern tip of Yeouido Island. Beyond its beauty, the iconic home of the Daehan Insurance Company was Asia’s tallest skyscraper when it was completed in 1985. As a testament to the skyward race since then, today the tower’s 249 meters don’t even break the world’s top 100 list..

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10 Aug 2009, Posted by Matt in Art & Culture, Historic Korea, Seoul, Video, 11 Comments

Gwanghwamun Plaza: A City’s New Center

The unveiling of a controversial, renovated Gwanghwamun Plaza has created a new centerpiece in downtown Seoul. Long a busy city intersection, what was 16 lanes of traffic is now punctuated by a 19,000-square-meter public plaza.

24 Feb 2009, Posted by Matt in Art & Culture, Buddhist Temples, Chungcheong, Gyeongsang, Seoul, 0 Comments

Korea Travel Expo 2009

This past weekend, southern Seoul’s COEX center hosted the sixth annual Korea Travel Expo.

The historically weak Korean won and global economic crisis has many Koreans looking at domestic travel destinations instead of holidays in Southeast Asia or the U.S. To meet their needs, this past weekend the Korea Travel Expo 2009 (site in Korean) hosted its sixth annual event at the Atlantic Hall of the COEX center in southern Seoul.

Nearly 500 booths representing 280 different regional governments, transportation companies and local festivals took part in the nation’s largest expo promoting domestic tourism. This being Korea, several booths offered free samples of indigenous liquor.

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31 Dec 2008, Posted by Matt in Historic Korea, Seoul, 1 Comments

Deoksugung Palace

Korean palaces like Deoksugung don’t shy away from using bright colors like pink and turquoise.

A few months ago during a Royal Asiatic Society walking tour of Seoul’s palaces, I learned that before most of the city’s five grand palaces were burned or bulldozed, they formed Asia’s second largest royal compound (the largest was China’s Forbidden City).

Case in point is the “Palace of Virtue and Longevity,” better known as Deoksugung, or Deoksu Palace. Located in the middle of modern Seoul, it was built during the mid-1400s as a private villa for Prince Wolsan, the big brother of King Seongjong. But when the Japanese invasion of 1592 left all of Hanyang’s (now Seoul) palaces burning, the residence was renamed Gyeongungung and converted into a temporary palace for just 7 years until Changdeokgung Palace became the royals’ primary residence. The ole villa-cum-palace fell into disuse over the next 2+ centuries before it became Emperor Gojong‘s official residence in the 1890s. My guide estimated that at its height, Deoksugung was comprised of 180 structures, but most were either burned in a 1904 fire or demolished by the Japanese during the colonial period. Today, only about 12 significant buildings remain on a footprint whose size is less than half its original. Nevertheless, what remains is a beautiful reminder of the sophistication of Korea’s Joseon period.

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