Dynastic History | Geunjeongjeon 근정전 — The Money That Rebuilt an Empty Palace

경복궁 had stood ruined since 1592, and who burned it is not settled. Several Korean texts of the period report, as hearsay, that residents of the capital fired the palaces themselves before the Japanese army arrived; Japanese records place the buildings still standing when troops entered the city. Either way the court did not rebuild for 273 years, because it could not pay for it.

In the spring of 1865 Queen Dowager Sinjeong, regent for the boy king Gojong, ordered the work, and Gojong's father, the 흥선대원군, ran it through a temporary Office of Palace Construction, the 영건도감. The financing is the memory. Officials, royal relatives and townspeople were assessed 원납전 — "willingly offered money", which it was not — with rank and office available to large contributors. Tolls were placed on Seoul's gates. Monks were recruited from the spring of 1865 to make up a shortfall in craftsmen. In November 1866 the treasury began minting the 당백전, a coin marked at a hundred 문 whose metal was worth perhaps five or six; minting stopped within months, and the price of rice rose several-fold at the outset. A fire in March 1866 had already destroyed much of the stockpiled timber.

The throne hall was reported finished late in 1867. Gojong moved in on the second day of the seventh lunar month of 1868, into a palace of some 330 buildings. Korean historiography treats the resentment the levies produced as one cause of the Daewongun's loss of power in 1873.

The Government-General of Chōsen built its headquarters across the palace's front between 1916 and 1926, and that building was demolished in 1995–96. Geunjeongjeon itself is 1867 work. The queue on its stone steps is for a ticket.

📸 Cover: Geunjeongjeon from the south, 2014 — Spike, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons