Gyeongbokgung

Colonialism, in most cases, involves a strong or developed country and a weak or undeveloped country. The strong state brings significant changes to the colony to make it more convenient in achieving benefits from the colony. Such changes are made in the government, the economy, culture, and to a degree, the architecture on the colony. When looking at the method of how rulers executed these changes, especially in architecture and urban planning, the ruling style can be easily shown. The Government-General Building, built in 1926, located in Seoul, Korea, was a product of Japanese colonialism over Korea from 1901 to 1945. Japanese “ruled Korea with an iron fist with highly centralized corps of military police and gendarmes. The rule was very repressive and harsh” (1 Han). Government-General Building was a central building where such coercive ruling was initiated. La Grande Poste, or the Grand Post Office, was built in 1910 during the period of French Algeria, 1830 to 1962. Located in Algiers, Algeria, La Grande Poste was built during the change in ruling policy of France. “‘From domination to subjugation’ [the policy] was based on cooperation between colonized and colonizer…”(246 Hamadh). Considering the context of the two architectures in relation to the cityscape and the urban planning it was involved in, the characteristics of the policies, either assimilation or association, over colonies can be well defined. Among the numerous changes that colonialism brought, urban…

Taejo founded Joseon on the ashes of the Goryeo Kingdom with its capital city Kaesong.[1] The dynasty settled it’s capital city in modern day Seoul and built the Gyeongbokgung palace; this meant expanding the kingdoms borders to reach both the Tumen river and the Yalu river. Taejo was going to continue to rule the dynasty as “Goryeo,” with only changing the royal bloodline to himself, but then decided a “clean break” from the previous dynasty was what he needed to successfully rule as King. In…

experience it. However, I view myself as an open-minded person and I adapt really quickly. When I first experience being bowed to by someone, I felt it was a little weird because backs at home we just say hi to each other. Later, I found out that it was a way to give respect to a person. The subway system was confusing at first, but before I know it, I was using it like I was a resident. Before coming to Korean I was very ignorant about Korean food. Although I was ignorant, I did have a good…

moved its new capital to Hanyang (modern day Seoul). During this time, the Gyeongbokgung Palace was built in Seoul, by King Taejo. In 1394, the Dynasty adopted Confucianism as the country’s official religion, this resulted in loss of wealth from Buddhists. King Sejong commissed a team of scholars to create a new writing system called Hangul. Although there was a lot of success from the Joseon Dynasty they faced repeated invasions from the Japanese (1592- 1598) and the Manchus (1627-1636). The…