Gwanghwamun restored to original Joseon Dynasty design

Gwanghwamun, the main gate of Seoul's Gyeongbok Palace, has been restored to its original Joseon Dynasty design after years of thorough research. It now features a wide platform and a new signboard, and a grand ceremony was held for its reopening

The newly restored woldae, a wide platform that leads up to the Gwanghwamun of Gyeongbok Palace, gets ready to be unveiled to the public on Sunday, together with its new signboard. [YONHAP]

The newly restored woldae, a wide platform that leads up to the Gwanghwamun of Gyeongbok Palace, gets ready to be unveiled to the public on Sunday, together with its new signboard. [YONHAP]

Gwanghwamun, the main gate of Gyeongbok Palace, has been fully restored to the way it used to look some 100 years ago, and reopened to the public on Sunday.

It now has woldae, a wide platform that leads up to the arched gate, and a “correct” signboard, which, according to the Cultural Heritage Administration (CHA), has been restored after years of thorough research. The current look is the closest to what it would have looked like during the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), before it was destroyed during the Japanese colonization of Korea.

To celebrate the occasion, the CHA organized a grand ceremony on Sunday and invited some 500 people who signed up for the event. They became the first people to march into Gyeongbok Palace through Gwanghwamun and its new woldae.

“The completion of the woldae restoration and hanging up the new signboard for Gwanghwamun finally wraps up the long restoration project of Gwanghwamun Square,” Choi said in his opening speech Sunday.

Since October 2020, the Seoul Metropolitan Government and the Cultural Heritage Administration have been working together to renovate Gwanghwamun Square as a means to create a more pedestrian-friendly space in the capital’s bustling downtown, which included a historical restoration project to bring back the woldae. A similar kind of the elevated platform built from stone can be found in front of major structures of Korea’s ancient palaces, such as Gyeongbok Palace’s Geunjeongjeon and Changdeok Palace's Injeongjeon.

Yang Suk-ja, a researcher at the Seoul National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage, said Gwanghwamun's woldae underwent a number of changes during King Gojong’s reign during the Joseon Dynasty, between 1863 and 1907. The exact time of its construction is unknown.

Gwanghwamun's restored woldae [CULTURAL HERITAGE ADMINISTRATION]

A black and white photograph of Gwanghwamun during the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) [NATIONAL FOLK MUSEUM OF KOREA]

The restored woldae is 48.7 meters (160 feet) long, 29.7 meters wide and 0.7 meters high. It has a separate 7-meter-wide path for the king, called eodo, down the center.

The CHA said that during the excavation and research process to restore the woldae, it discovered that the stones that were used for building Gwanghwamun’s woldae back in the day were left in one of Joseon’s royal tomb sites, Donggureung, in Guri, Gyeonggi.

“We were able to use about 40 pieces of the stones from there to restore the woldae,” according to an official from the CHA.

On Sunday, Choi expressed his gratitude toward the family of late Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee for donating in August two pieces of the stone statue depicting a mythical, auspicious animal called seosu, which used to decorate the Gwanghwamun’s woldae. The administration said it was able to use them in restoring the woldae close to its original form.

A new signboard for Gwanghwamun was also unveiled to the public on Sunday. The new signboard has the Chinese characters for “Gwanghwamun” written in gold with a black background, as it would have looked during the Joseon Dynasty.

Workers take down the old signboard at Gwanghwamun on Oct. 12. [YONHAP]

Gwanghwamun's new signboard has Chinese characters for "Gwanghwamun" in gold with a black background. [CULTURAL HERITAGE ADMINISTRATION]

Before this, the signboard's characters were written in black on a white background. It was put up in 2010 when the palace and gate underwent renovations. But after analyzing an old black-and-white photograph of Gwanghwamun that dates back to the Joseon Dynasty, which was discovered at the Smithsonian Institution in 2016, the CHA concluded that the original color would have been gold gilded letters on a black background, admitting the black and white version was restored incorrectly after analyzing two other black and white photographs of the gate taken in 1902 and 1916.

“The government will continue to work hard to restore the historic significance of this area so that Gyeongbok Palace and Gwanghwamun Square, which get visited by millions of tourists from across the globe, will no doubt be one of Korea’s most symbolic landmarks,” Choi said.

BY YIM SEUNG-HYE [yim.seunghye@joongang.co.kr]