For visitors to Korea (such as myself) who like to try to get round all the UNESCO-listed world heritage sites, the list just got longer. On Saturday 6 July, the World Heritage Committee included nine Seowon, or Neo-Confucian Academies, in the list. The nine seowon are dotted around the central and southern parts of the […]
Category: Heritage
2017 travel diary 2: The Gaya royal tombs in Haman County
Gaya-eup, Haman-gun, Gyeongsangnam-do, Sunday 30 April, 12 noon. Ever since I had seen a small ancient Gaya kingdom burial area in the hills above Saengcho, a town in Sancheong County, I had been intrigued. The tombs’ location was so different from the imposing tumuli laid out in the plains of Gyeongju or the geomantically auspicious […]
Historical feature: Sejong of Korea – The Philosopher King
“There will be no end to the troubles of the state or indeed of humanity until philosophers become kings or until those we now call kings really and truly become philosophers.” This is one of the most famous quotations from Plato. It is taken from his work The Republic, which in attempting to set out […]
2016 travel diary 11: Buyeo National Museum and the tombs at Neungsan-ri
Buyeo-eup, Chungcheongnam-do, 17 May 2016 10am. Buyeo National Museum Next stop was the Buyeo National Museum. Here, we were totally shameless in our visit. It was to be a precision strike: go and see the the famous Gilt Bronze Incense Burner of Baekje and get out quick: we had an appointment in Sancheong. But of […]
2016 travel diary 10: early morning in Baekje Cultural Land
Gyuam-myeon, Buyeo-gun, Chungchongnam-do, 17 May 2016, 7am. Lotte and early Korea-Japan connections Baekje is known for its close ties to early Japan. According to one version of events, Empress Jingu was an invader from the Korean peninsula and had Baekje blood in her. Such a controversial hypothesis does not appear as a possibility on Jingu’s […]
2016 travel diary 9: Busosanseong – the Baekje royal garden
Buyeo-gun, Chungcheongnam-do, 16 May 2016, 5:30pm. The Archaeological Site in Gwanbuk-ri Sometimes, collecting UNESCO points is not as fulfilling as it might be. The item of heritage that has been registered might not be particularly exciting to look at, even though it is historically important. But if a site is historically important you may well […]
2016 travel diary 8: Buyeo’s Jeongnimsa Temple Site
Buyeo-gun, Chungcheongnam-do, 16 May 2016, 4:45pm. The sun is still hot as we arrive at our destination. We walk slowly, as there is little shade, past the ticket office to where is a wide, flat open space in the middle of which is National Treasure #9: the five storey stone pagoda of Jeongnimsa Temple. Is one allowed […]
2016 travel diary 7: Gongju’s fortress
Gongju, Chungcheongnam-do, 16 May 2016, 3pm. Not far away from Songsan-ri is the fortress of Gongsanseong. It clings to the banks of the Geumgang river (nothing to do with Mount Geumgang in north Gangwondo) and its walls scale the cliffs and meander along the contours of the hill, forming a 2.6km circuit which climbs to […]
2016 travel diary 6: Gongju’s royal tombs
Gongju, Chungcheongnam-do, 16 May 2016, 2:15pm. The Royal Tombs in Songsan-ri Our first stop in Gongju is the set of seven or more tombs in Songsan-ri. The experts think there may be as many as ten tombs in the area. It seems odd, in an age when so much in the way of sophisticated electronics […]
2016 travel diary 5: An introduction to the Baekje Historic Areas
Gongju, Chungcheongnam-do, 16 May 2016 The kingdom of Baekje had its beginnings as a small state founded on the south banks of the Han River in 18 BCE by King Onjo. The people were largely of Buyeo origins – an early kingdom absorbed into Goguryeo. The kingdom gradually grew, absorbing the small Mahan states to […]
2016 travel diary 3: Seoul’s Fortress Walls, and genre painting at the DDP
Jongno, Seoul, Sunday 15 May 2016. The time lag has caught up with me. My intention this morning had been to go along to the Dongdaemun Design Plaza to visit the exhibition of Joseon dynasty genre paintings from the Kansong museum before joining the RASKB for a walk along the eastern sections of Seoul’s fortress […]
A way to make sure you never have enough time in Korea
I’ve just discovered a great way to help plan a trip to a particular part of Korea to make sure you get maximum value from your time in the area. Go to the Cultural Heritage Administration (CHA) website, go to Heritage Info, and then General Search. In the search form, select the Location (province or […]
Looking back at 2015: Culture, sport and tourism
In the first of four articles looking back over 2015, we recall some of the culture, sports and heritage stories that made the news. Heritage The historic Baekje sites were listed by UNESCO as world heritage. UNESCO also listed in their Memory of the World register some Confucian woodblock texts and records of the family […]
2015 Travel Diary day 2: The Drawing hand | Seooreung | Tea Museum | Makgeolli at Kim Sakkat
Myeongdong, Seoul, 30 May. Two hours sleep on the plane, and only another two on my first night in Seoul, means that I’m groggy on Saturday morning. A quick session in the hotel gym doesn’t do much to remedy that. Coffee with The Drawing Hand My brain is gently kick-started by a coffee in the hotel lobby, […]
Looking back at 2014: Culture, sport and tourism
In the first of four articles looking back over 2014, we recall some of the culture, sports and heritage stories that made the news. Arts Dansaekhwa emerged as flavour of the year. Following the MMCA exhibition in 2013 and Joan Kee’s book, Kukje Gallery had a monochrome retrospective, and dansaekhwa artists were included in MMCA […]
Exhibition visit: Constancy and Change in Korean Traditional Craft
Nothing prepared you for the sight that greeted you when you entered the room containing the Korean crafts at Tent London. As you were wandering past the various stalls in the main part of the exhibition displaying contemporary crafts from around the world on your way to the “Constancy and Change” room, you might have […]
Latest UNESCO listings break the stereotypes
A famine-ridden state that spends all its money on its army and its nukes; and a country that builds a green city and restores its rivers… Those are the stereotypes. Yet it’s the North that has just had a biosphere reserve registered at UNESCO, while the South’s latest registration is an impressive piece of military […]