Seoul: from Hanyang to the city on the Han

For more than six centuries Seoul has been the capital of Korea. The Joseon dynasty made it Hanyang at the end of the fourteenth century and ringed it with a wall over four mountains; the twentieth century tore much of it down; and the city that grew up along the Han in the decades since has become one of the great cities of Asia.

At a glance

Population: more than nine million people in the city itself, at the heart of a capital region that is home to about half of all South Koreans.

Names through history: Hanyang, then Hanseong, under the Joseon dynasty; Seoul, a Korean word for “capital”.

A royal capital ringed by mountains, rebuilt within living memory into one of Asia’s great cities.

Shaped by: the Joseon dynasty (from the end of the fourteenth century), its palaces and city wall; the twentieth century of colonial rule and war; rebuilding and rapid growth after 1953; the Olympic Games of 1988.

UNESCO: Jongmyo Shrine (1995) and Changdeokgung (1997) in the city; Hwaseong Fortress in Suwon (1997) nearby.

The capital of Joseon

At the end of the fourteenth century the founders of the Joseon dynasty chose a valley north of the Han, protected by mountains on every side, for their new capital, Hanyang. They built Gyeongbokgung as the principal palace below Bugaksan, Jongmyo as the shrine of the royal ancestors, and a city wall that followed the ridges of the four inner mountains.

Palaces and the wall

Over the centuries the court built further palaces: Changdeokgung, whose buildings follow the hills and whose rear garden is a landscape of ponds and pavilions; Changgyeonggung beside it; Deoksugung and Gyeonghuigung to the west. Most were burned during the wars of the late sixteenth century and rebuilt; Gyeongbokgung itself lay in ruins for more than two centuries before it was rebuilt in the nineteenth.

The alphabet

In the fifteenth century the court created Hangeul, the Korean alphabet, promulgated in 1446 so that ordinary people could read and write their own language. The National Hangeul Museum in Yongsan tells its story.

The twentieth century

From 1910 to 1945 Korea was under Japanese colonial rule, and many palace buildings were demolished or moved. The Korean War of 1950–53 left the city in ruins. These are painful chapters, remembered in the city’s museums; we tell them briefly here, and leave their politics out.

The city on the Han

In the decades after 1953 Seoul grew at an astonishing pace, south across the river into Gangnam and along both banks of the Han, its growth often called the miracle on the Han. The city hosted the Olympic Games in 1988, which left it Olympic Park.

The design city

Today the old city is being uncovered again: palace gates and halls rebuilt, the Cheonggyecheon stream restored to the open air, stretches of the wall reopened to walkers. Beside them stand Zaha Hadid’s Dongdaemun Design Plaza and Lotte World Tower, and the restaurants, galleries and fashion houses that have made Seoul one of the most watched cities in the world.

Our advice: begin at Gyeongbokgung, walk through Bukchon to Changdeokgung, then climb a section of the city wall at dusk: six centuries in a day.

Sources

History: Royal Palaces and Tombs (Korea Heritage Service, royal.khs.go.kr); Seoul Metropolitan Government (seoulcitywall.seoul.go.kr); UNESCO World Heritage Centre; National Hangeul Museum; Seoul Museum of History.