From an elementary school in Daehangno to a temple bell in Deoksu Palace via Tapgol Park and 560 years of history

If you walk along Daehangno about halfway between Jongno 5-ga Station and Hyehwa Station you'll come upon the gates to Seoul Sadae Buseol Elementary and Girls Middle School.

These gate pillars originally stood at the entrance to Pagoda (now Tapgol) Park, Seoul's first modern park, built under the direction of John McLeavy Brown in 1897. [Hat tip to Ji-hoon for showing this to me.] About the only photo of the gates I've ever seen is this one from the time of the Samil Uprising in 1919:



I originally posted that photo in this post, which includes photos taken from this page, which has scans of a 1919 Korean Red Cross pamphlet about the suppression of the Samil independence movement. It includes the declaration of Korean independence, 34 photos (taken by Francis Schofield), and a statement from the Korean Red Cross. It was in this park, of course, that the declaration of independence was read on March 1, 1919.

Before the park was built, the ten-story pagoda it is named after stood surrounded by houses, as captured by Percival Lowell in 1884:

Many more photos of the pagoda from both before and after the area became a park can be found here, while Brother Anthony has posted James Gale's 1916 article about the pagoda here.

I hadn't realized the fate of Wongaksa, the temple it was built to be a part of. As Wikipedia reveals, King Sejo had Wongak-sa temple built in 1465, followed by the pagoda 2 years later. on the site of an older Goryeo-period temple, Heungbok-sa. The temple was closed and turned into a kisaeng house by Joseon's most notorious king, Yeonsan-gun (who ruled from 1494 to 1506), and his successor, King Jungjong (ruled 1506–1544) turned the site into government offices.

This was actually part of a spate of temple building / improvements by King Sejo, as Gregory Henderson explained in his 1959 article for Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, "A History of the Chŏng Dong Area and the American Embassy Residence" (available as a .docx file here - more Transactions articles can be found here). He made a specific addition to Hŭngchŏn-sa, a temple which stood near present day Deoksu Palace:

In 1462, King Sejo, a devout Buddhist, deeply conscience-stricken over his murder of his own nephew Tanjong to attain the throne, repaired and built many temples, notably Wŏngak-sa in Pagoda Park with its pagoda; with these repairs he had a great new bell made for Hŭngch’ŏn-sa in the seventh year of his reign. For more than thirty years the temple continued with this embellishment and with its high tower. In 1495, however, there came to the Korean throne one of the most notorious tyrants of Korean history, Yŏnsan-gun, a man dedicated to sybaritic personal habits, malice and impetuousness. In July, 1504, he ordered the temple razed and built in its place an extra office for the care of his royal horses and their accoutrements. The next monarch, Chung-jong, after overthrowing Yŏnsan-gun, abolished this extravagance and built a public office here. Of the temple, only the five-story shari hall remained. 

Of that five-story hall, Henderson tells us that on

the night of March 28, 1510, the students of th[e] central Confucian college, firmly convinced by their instructors that Buddhism was heresy, marched on the shari hall and enthusiastically set fire to it. [...] The bell now alone remained and this, after many perigrinations through Seoul’s palaces, finally came to the grounds of the Tŏksu (Duksoo) Palace where it hangs today, the only remaining reminder of this temple’s colorful history.

And that's the history of the bell (this one, from this page) that you can see in Deoksugung Palace today, which was cast around the same time as the Wongagksa Pagoda in Tapgol Park was built, the park which saw its original gate pillars moved to an elementary school on Daehangno. A bit of a detour, but hopefully the ride was worth it.

I'll save the story of one of the architects of Yeonsan-gun's overthrow, and his tomb behind where I used to live in Banghwa-dong, for another day.

The transformation of Gindeung Maeul, 2008-2015

It was back in 2008 that I first posted about the destruction of Gindeung Maeul, a neighborhood south of where I lived in Banghwa-dong. The house above was one of the holdouts during both the first phase of demolition in 2008 and the second phase in 2010. It was finally demolished in 2012, but it wasn't until early 2014 - after 5 years of lying empty - that construction of apartments in Gindeung Maeul finally began. Here are my posts about the area from 2008 and 2010:

Exploring Gindeung Maeul
The Disappearance of Gindeung Maeul

More of Gindeung Maeul being destroyed

It was initually torn down to make way for part of the Banghwa New Town. It can be seen jutting out on the right below:

This new town plan, however - like most of them - never was carried out. Here's what the area looked like from above in early 2006, with the first phase, meant to be a part of the Banghwa New Town and carried out in 2008, marked in yellow; the area marked in red was the second phase, carried out in 2010, and intended to make way for a much larger project.

The area after the first phase of demolition:

The second phase of demolition was to make way for the Magok development, about 3 square kilometers including a lake park (since converted to "Seoul Botanic Gardens"). I looked at the the completion of the the first phase of apartment building for the Magok development back in 2014. Below is a map of the planned apartments (most of those in the bottom left corner are not yet completed (mainly due to the need to move a school (since demolished) and because there's still a small military base there. As can be seen, the red shape marks the Gindeung redevelopment,

Here are panoramic shots of the changes to the neighbourhood between 2008 and 2015:

June 2008

July 2008

August 2008

September 2008

October 2008

November 2008.

January 2010

October 2011

May 2012

February 2013

May 2013

 August 2013

November 2013

May 2014

September 2014

October 2014

January 2015

March 2015

July 2015

That's quite the change from mid-2008:

Here are the schematics and plans for the Magok Hillstate Apartments:

(From here.)

(From here.)

A view from the side:

Here are views from above of Gindeung Maeul and Magok in early 2008 and mid 2015:

Needless to say, the area has changed quite a bit.

Retraction: The Bongo is not named after Omar Bongo

The assertion I made in my previous post that the Kia Bongo was named after Omar Bongo is incorrect. As Ben pointed out in a comment to that post, Mazda began making Bongo vans in 1966 and Kia's Bongos are copies of them. I'd wondered why no mention of President Bongo's influence on the Kia Bongo's name appeared when I searched in contemporary newspapers. Now I know. Apologies for believing something that appeared in the Korea Times substantiated a rumor. Hopefully the Bongo ads were entertaining, at least.

The origin of the Bongo

Update:

The assertion below that the Kia Bongo was named after Omar Bongo appears to be wrong. As Ben pointed out in a comment below, Mazda began making Bongo vans in 1966 and Kia's Bongos are copies of them. I'd wondered why no mention of President Bongo's influence on the Kia Bongo's name appeared when I searched in contemporary newspapers. Now I know. Apologies for believing something that appeared in the Korea Times substantiated a rumor.

Original Post:

Because who doesn't want to watch Kia Bongo ads from 1984?



A couple years ago I was told over beers at Broughton's Club the rumored origin of the name 'Bongo' for Kia's truck and van line. The other day a noticed this in a 2007 Korea Times article:

Thus, we Koreans are familiar with the president of Gabon. Korea established diplomatic ties with Gabon in 1962 _ among the first ties with an African nation. Gabon is situated on the Atlantic coast of Central Africa, at a point in the world quite distant from Korea, and it possesses abundant natural resources, such as oil, minerals, timber and fish. [...]

This visit was the fourth trip to Korea for the Gabonese president, who visited Korea in 1975, 1984 and 1996 as well. In celebration of his visit past years, the Korean government has issued postage stamps. Furthermore, the popular "Bongo" vehicles _ vans and pickup trucks produced by Kia Motors _ were named after President Bongo at the time of his first trip to Seoul in 1975.

[Edit: We now know this is incorrect.] To explain further, Omar Bongo ruled Gabon from the 1960s until his death in 2009, after which his son Ali-Ben Bongo Ondimba was elected president. The Kia vehicle - Gabonese president link is [incorrectly] mentioned in Korean here as well. Stamps issued to commemorate two of president Bongo's visits can be seen here, while photos of his state visit, such as the one below, can be found here.

They really pulled out all the stops for his visit, didn't they?  (Note the digital clock on City Hall - I'd assumed it was installed around the time of the Olympics and had no idea it was around that early.)

The Bongo was first launched in 1980, 5 years after the above visit. Here's another ad:



Another tie between Korea and Gabon is that the President's body guard was reported in 2010 to be Korean. Taekwondo instructor Park Sang-cheol answered an ad recruiting bodyguards for the Gabonese government in 1984 and "was assigned to guard Ali-Ben Bongo Ondimba, the current president and son of former president Omar Bongo. Since then, Park has been by the younger Bongo's side during his studies in France and throughout his career as ministers of foreign affairs and defense and other top-level posts in the government."

As Park notes: "Gabon was the first among African countries to establish diplomatic ties with South Korea and it has continued to support our country on the global stage." Little remembered now is the competition between the two Koreas in the 1960s and 1970s for international recognition, in part for backing in the UN when the "Korean question" came up (as it did in 1975, when both Koreas got resolutions favoring passed at the UN - for the North Korean side of this competition, see Charles Armstrong's Tyranny of the Weak).

But for now... make it funky!

Bando Hall Station Plaza

There's an issue of the British illustrated magazine The Sphere from 1945 posted at Ebay which has an interesting image of Seoul (click on the third image here - hat tip to Hamel):

One gets the idea it's supposed to be at what is now Seoul Plaza in front of City Hall, but the building at center appears to look like the Bando Hotel (which stood where the Lotte Hotel is now, and was certainly taller than City Hall), but on top of it is City Hall's tower, and the building at left is topped by Seoul Station's dome. An odd choice, especially considering the artist must have based the painting on actual photos.

On the other hand, It's not like the Seoul Metropolitan Government hasn't done the same thing, in a manner of speaking (Coex - among others - next to Cheonggyecheon?)...

(From 2006)

Lost landscape redux

Years ago I posted about Kim Ki-chan's book "Lost Landscape," in which this photo, taken in modern-day Bucheon, was published:

Jung-dong, Bucheon, 1976.3.21

In the spring of 2015 I noticed her on the wall of the rail underpass east of Yonsei's main gate, amid the other graffiti: 

As can be seen, the person who painted next to, and slightly over her, chose to leave her intact. But not the person after that. It was a lovely addition while it lasted, and made me smile every time I passed it.

...only sleeping

Happy lunar new year / 새해 복 많이 받으세요 to all of my (rather neglected for the last six months) readers out there. There have been lots of changes for me during that time, with the larger ones being that I moved to Seattle and am pursuing an MA in Korean studies at the University of Washington. Needless to say, I've been learning lots that could easily be blogged about, but have just been too busy, especially adjusting to the first quarter. I was thinking of posting during the Christmas break, especially after seeing this (I still think it's a shame the archives weren't kept), but an unexpected lack of internet put the kibosh on that idea. Time at last to get the ball rolling and post something here, and hopefully keep that ball rolling. There are a few series I've posted here that could stand to be finished (English Spectrum, the '88 Olympics come to mind) and a few unkept promises, especially in regard to posting about Korean music history.

Just to start, here are a few links I've seen over the past few days:

A Korea Times article about the "Foreign Book Store" near Noksapyeong, its history, and how Seoul Metropolitan Government chose it "as one of its "Future Heritages" in an effort to preserve valuable tangible or intangible heritages within the city." I once found an first (paperback) edition of Alexander Trocchi's "Cain's Book" there, which was quite a surprise.

Film critic Tony Rayns wrote an open letter to the people of Busan supporting the work of Busan International Film Festival Director Lee Yongkwan and castigating the Busan Metropolitan City Council's vendetta against him, warning that they could do damage to the festival and Busan's reputation. It reminds me of when Bucheon mayor Hong Gun-pyo's personal vendetta turned PIFAN upside down in 2005.

And lastly, the New Yorker asks "Can a Big Government Push Bring the Nobel Prize in Literature to South Korea?"

It's funny how on the one hand national government money is supporting a push to bring acclaim to the nation (and check off another box on the "legitimate member of Western modernity" list), and on the other hand an endeavour which has contributed to Korea's soft power / reputation abroad / cultural exports may yet be sabotaged by a local government trying to throw its weight around.