Unhyeongung Royal Residence, Seoul

Unhyeongung was the family home of Yi Ha-eung, a minor royal who spent his youth being overlooked. In 1863 the throne fell vacant and the dowager queen chose his eleven-year-old second son, who had grown up in this house, to be King Gojong. As the king's father Yi took the title Heungseon Daewongun and, for the next decade, governed Korea from these rooms. It was a forceful decade. He closed all but forty-seven of the country's Confucian academies, rebuilt Gyeongbokgung, purged the ministers who had run the court for fifty years, and refused every Western demand to open the country. The policy was set here, in the men's hall Noandang. Gojong's wedding to the woman later known as Empress Myeongseong was held in Norakdang in 1866; she and the Daewongun would spend the next thirty years as enemies. The compound was once far larger. What survives is the core — Noandang, Norakdang, Irodang and the servants' quarters — with the rooms furnished as they would have been. The Daewongun died in Noandang in 1898.

Original Text

Where it is

Region

Jongno-gu, Seoul

Designation

Historic Site · 사적