Taking the Seoul Train, part 2

During our visit to Seoul we also visited the National Folk Museum, which was quite interesting. They have a series of Saturday traditional dance and music performances, and we were treated to a wonderful group of traditional dancers. My favourite number involved dancing with hourglass-shaped drums.


Magpies are good luck in Korea!



These are jangseung, Korean totem poles or tikis. They usually stand at the entrance to a town or village to ward off daemons and mark village boundaries.


Acupuncture dolls!



These are stone scholars that would have marked graves of important people.

Some of the stone figures had very strange faces!

Taking the Seoul Train, part 1

Scott and I trekked in to Seoul on Saturday and visited Gyeonbok Palace. The palace was founded in the 14th century, during the Joseon Dyanasty. It was a monsoon day in Korea but that meant the crowds were pretty thin and we had a great day.

There are 36 stone figures around the main hall, Geungjeong-jeon. One of my favourites was this turtle monster, called a dusky warrior turtle. Perhaps an inspiration for Gamera?




There were many excellent statues around the grounds.



Scott says hello to a new friend.



This is the garden behind Gyotae-jeon, the Queen’s residence. The chimneys have various symbolic animals on them. We learned that cranes and turtles represent longevity, butterflies and flowers represent fertility, and, somewhat surprisingly, bats represent wealth.


This is Hyangwon-jeong, a garden for relaxation. We saw two ducklings slowly making their way across the tops of the lily pads here.