Gyeongbokgung Palace Part 2
After staring at the beautiful throne room, I made my way to an opening on the side of the courtyard walls and entered into a smaller grouping of one-story, ornately decorated buildings. This was the crown prince's residence. What struck me at first was new it looked and also how detailed every inch of the walls, corners and roofs were. The buildings that were standing there were recreated in 1999 after they were leveled during the Japanese colonial rule half a century before that. In fact many of the structures inside the palace walls were new recreations, but were built in nearly exact replicas of the originals, right down to the same direction the door where facing and the same dragon pictures that were on the ends of every singled roof. I had picked a good day to explore this bit of history; it was the first day of our Chusak break, or the Korean Thanksgiving, and hardly anyone was there. I also came here alone. When I entered the prince's corridors, there was not a s...