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Return to Gyeongju: museum without walls (part 2)

Adventures, travelling in Korea,

After visiting the museum, I set off up the road to Anapji pond. On the previous visit to Gyeongju, we made a very brief and very cold stop at this pleasure garden of the past but I wanted very much to go back there and really get a sense of what it must have been like in its heyday, when noblemen and queens, dignitaries and palace guards walked the paths on perfect afternoons and held great feasts in the halls and gardens.

Anapji pond is beautiful. In 674 King Munmu created a pleasure garden with rare and exotic plants and animals at this site and had built a man-made pond in roughly the shape of his kingdom (the recently unified Korean peninsula). The shape of the pond is such that it is impossible to see all of it from any point on the edge, so that around every corner, you see a new and often even more beautiful bit of the gardens. Because the area fell into disuse after the Silla kingdom fell to the Goryeo dynasty and the capital was moved elsewhere, there are no longer exotic plants and animals here, but it is easy to imagine what it must have been like in those days.

I took the chance as soon as I got to Anapji to settle down on a bench for a little while and take a break. It’s a perfect spot to rest. Unfortunately, because winter is still with us, the area is not at it’s green and luscious best and several of the smaller pools are empty – I assume so that they are not damaged by freezing water – but it is still lovely.

After resting awhile, I set off at a gentle stroll to walk around the pond. I also somehow managed to go in the wrong direction. I didn’t see any signs indicating how one is supposed to walk around the pond but perhaps they were in Korean, or there is some Korean custom of only walking around bodies of water in a clockwise direction. Either way, I was definitely going in the opposite direction to everyone I met.

As I walked past bamboo stands and many, many Koreans having their photographs taken, I looked out at the few reconstructed rooms of the palace that once stood on the other side of the pond. The water was not blue and clear as it must have been then but, past the island on my left, I could see the Korean-roofed rooms and could picture the upper classes of the time laughing and chatting and feasting, with torches burning and reflecting in the pond’s water, on a summer evening. Or women sitting together looking out towards my position, at the animals on the small island and the ducks and geese, for which the pond was named, alighting on the water. Or foreign visitors walking with advisors to the king as they discussed great treaties and trade agreements. It is said that part of the design of the gardens included twelve small hills meant to replicate twelve mountains in China so that the Chinese diplomats would feel at home.

I turned a corner and came to a section of the pond that bulges out from the main body. The water looked a little murky with the dried out leaves of water lilies floating on top. On closer inspection I discovered that the murkiness was, in fact, ice. As usual, I was taken aback by the strangle-hold the cold really has here – the weather wasn’t warm but it certainly didn’t seem freezing and the sun was shining right onto the water and yet here was a layer of ice with dead leaves frozen into it just floating defiantly on the surface of the lake.

Having meandered the whole way around the pond in the wrong direction, I stopped to look at the three reconstructed structures on the other side. These three rooms all stand on the edge of the pond, looking out across the water and would have formed part of the larger palace. They have been constructed exactly in the spots where excavation of the area suggests they would have stood originally. The rest of the palace has not been reconstructed, but a pattern of walkways and lawns has been set up to give an indication of just how large the rooms would have been and the general shape and size can be estimated, especially with the added assistance of various models. One of the rooms of this hall would have been the Imhaejeon Hall where a banquet was held for King Taejo, founder of the Goryeo dynasty that took over control of the united Korean peninsula from the Silla monarchy. Some sources suggest that the end to Silla rule (935AD) took place in that very hall, right here at Anapji pond.

Although a detached palace, the Imhaejeon site (including Anapji Pond) would, during the height of the Silla era, have stood next to Banwolseong Fortress – the main palace-fortress in Gyeongju – the name of which means, when literally translated, ‘crescent moon shape on top of hill’. Today, the palace/fortress is gone and all that remains is open land surrounded by forest except for a few ruins – a moat, an ice-house (505AD) and a playground which may or may not date from a later period. Records and excavation suggestion, however, that this was a great and important fortress that stood for hundreds of years from the date of its construction in 101AD. I walked through the old palace area and up towards the Cheomseongdae Observatory – the oldest astronomical observatory in the East – which I had seen on the last visit but which was worth stopping to marvel at one more time before heading on towards the tombs.

Every culture has it’s own approach to burying the dead. Some argue that evidence of funeral rights is one of the things that indicates the start of modern human life and separates humans from animals. In Korea, as in most places, burial traditions changed over time. The Tumuli of the Silla period are considered precious to the history of Korea and are part of the World Heritage-designated Gyeongju Historic Areas. I have seen tumuli before – at Bullo-dong in Daegu. The tombs in Gyeongju are much, much bigger than those I saw in Daegu. One of the tombs, Hwangnamdaechong, a huge double-tomb, thought to be the final resting place of a royal couple and is 23m high, 120m North to South and 80m East to West. As you walk through the park, they tower above you like small mountains. But man-made mountains. A little, I suppose, like small pyramids. The interior constructions made me think about the little I know about pyramids (mostly from movies and TV shows and probably wrong). In the burial chamber a tomb like this is a wooden coffin containing the body – complete with funeral finery in dress and jewellery – and a wooden chest filled with the treasures of the king, queen or noble person being buried. Around these, a wooden chamber is then built. On top of and all around this chamber are piled metres and metres of stones and rock and gravel, until finally a layer of sand and grass cover the mound.

Some of the most famous and some that have been excavated are clustered in the Tumuli park (Daereungwon). These layers of stone, along I imagine with legends, taboos and fears, protected these tombs for hundreds and in some cases thousands of years before the archaeologists came along and started to excavate, very carefully and reverently and found their treasures and construction intact. From what I can gather, most of these tombs still haven’t been excavated. They still stand, therefore, in their original form.

A few of the tombs still live in the legends of Korea today. King Mich’u (13th King of the Silla dynasty) during his 22-year reign built up the power of his kingdom and defended it from the threat of invasion from neighbouring countries. After his death, the country came under fierce attack. It looked as though they might be defeated and overrun. And then, the legend goes, the late king sent an army of soldiers from beyond the grave to drive off the invaders and save his kingdom. The ghost soldiers fought gallantly alongside the living soldiers and succeeded in defeating the enemy.  During the subsequent revelry they all disappeared, leaving behind only bamboo leaves. For this reason, the tomb of King Mich’u is called Chukhyonnung or ‘Bamboo Soldier Tomb’.

One of the tombs has been excavated and is open to the public to enter. It’s a great way to show visitors what the inside of these tombs would have looked like, and coincidentally the type of display I prefer to the more sterile approach of the museum I had seen earlier. The inside is half-empty with displays along the walls of some of the artefacts found in the tomb and an area set up to show how the coffin and wooden treasure-chest would have been laid out. It was fascinating to see and made wandering around the rest of the park more interesting as I imagined what might be inside each one. This particular tomb also has a special name. When it was excavated, some of the items found in this tomb included horse-things like stirrups and bells and, most importantly, saddle or saddle ornaments with the image of a flying horse painted on the side. As a result this tomb is known as ‘Heavenly Horse Tomb‘. I couldn’t help thinking that my younger sister would enjoy the fact that one of the most famous and most popular of the Gyeongju tombs has a horse theme.

By this stage, I was starving, so I decided to brave the language barrier and stop into one of the restaurants near the tomb park. This area of Gyeongju is known for a particular dish: Ssambap. ‘Bap’ is rice in Korean and Ssambap is a meal where you roll a little rice with sauces, vegetables and various other bits and pieces in lettuce or some other green leaf and eat it like a ‘wrap’. I have never eaten it before and I was a little nervous to go into a restaurant by myself and order it, but I wanted to, so I went into the first place I saw. The non-English speaking lady at the restaurant showed me to a table and brought me a cup of tea. ‘Cup’ here being a handle-less mug. ‘Tea’ here referring to something non-ceylon – don’t ask me what. She then started bringing me dishes. And then more dishes. And then more dishes. Ssambap has lots and lots of dishes with little servings of things that can be eaten on Ssambap. I didn’t count the dishes but there must have been at least 20, including spicy tofu soup and (I think) seaweed soup. She also showed me (no words, of course) how to eat it. I felt a little odd sitting by myself at a table with a sea of little dishes in front of me but the food was delicious. I’m not normally that mad about Korean food but there was something – one of the sauces or maybe the meat or perhaps the grass-like green stuff – that was yummy. I tried all of the banchan (side-dishes) except the gray stuff that looked a little like dried fish bones. There was no way I was going to finish everything, but I had a good meal and was feeling full and satisfied by the time I left. The whole sea of plates and different tastes cost just 9000 won – not bad for a meal probably meant for two or three people.

The whole cost of the day was pretty minimal – trains 7300 won each way, museum free, Anapji Pond 1000 won (R7), Tumuli Park 1500 won (R10) – and definitely worth it. It was now heading for the end of the day’s light and time to head back to Daegu, so, after popping into a souvenir shop where I resisted the urge to buy a mini, replica Emile Bell (because it would be too heavy to take home), I set off on foot back to the station.

On the way, I spent lots of time looking at the town around me. Just across the road from the Tumuli park, between some other tall tombs and the thousand-plus year old Observatory, children were flying kites and playing baseball. At one point I wandered past some smaller (and possibly older) tombs just next to the main road, between houses and little shops. It occurred to me that during the whole day I had felt as though the people around me – the children in the museum, the groups of teens walking through the old palace/fortress, the families in the Tumuli Park, had somehow not been paying enough attention to the how old and precious it all was. I hadn’t been consciously aware of it, but I think I was subtly annoyed by their lack of reverence for it and interest in it. I wondered if it was because it’s all so different to the history I know. But I don’t think that was it. I’ve always seen history as something different – something apart from what is now.

Watching those boys playing baseball with the huge tombs in the background, I started to wonder if part of that sense of separation from history comes from the fact that the place I claim as my heritage is not the place where my ancestors walked and lived and were buried. For these Korean children, the world has not changed that much since the times when these Kings and Queens ruled in Gyeongju. There are modern conveniences and high-tech facilities and everyone has education. But the food they eat isn’t that different and people are still buried in earthen mounds and, perhaps importantly, the people buried in those tombs and the people who worked for them, are probably their direct ancestors.

And, more than that, it is a line they can trace without disruptions. In my first few months in Korea, I started to get annoyed with websites and people telling me that Korea has a history a couple of thousand years old. Everyone has a history which is thousands of years old, I thought, so why is this special? The difference is they have an unbroken history of thousands of years. For a white girl from Africa, indeed for anyone from Southern Africa, the amazingness history comes in disjointed bursts. There are layers contributed by different peoples at different times. It is impossible to draw a straight line from the Cradle of Humankind to the people living in Gauteng today – which perhaps contributes to my refusal to see history as a single, linear narrative. Here, the history is one unbroken line. It also might explain why so many Koreans struggle to think of the Korean peninsula as two different countries – the Korean war in the 1950s and the separation since is just a short tangle in the single long story. They even have a Ministry of Unification. In spite of all the invasions and foreign interference, Korea has remained one country with a common history since it became the Unified Silla Kingdom in 668AD. I wonder if Koreans who travel to other parts of the world ever start to sense that difference and if makes them feel as foreign in other places as it made me feel in Gyeongju.

Back at the train station, I caught the (somewhat delayed) Saemaul train home and headed out to an Indian restaurant (and yummy lamb curry) for a friend’s birthday dinner, but the sense of difference and other-ness has remained with me all the week. It’s a little bit uncomfortable and has spurred me to spend some more time thinking seriously about what comes next but I suppose I should see it as a reminder that one of the reasons history is important is that it challenges us to consider who we are in the overwhelming presence of the human past.

Return to Gyeongju: museum without walls (part 1)

Adventures, travelling in Korea, ,

A few months ago, I spent a delightful day in Gyeongju with some friends. Most of the time was spent riding bikes (with accompanying reversion to happy, childhood days) and it was most fun. Towards the end of the day, we shivered our way around a few of the historical sites for which the town is famous before rushing home in an attempt to get warm. After my (mostly) failed trip to the Daegu museum last weekend, what better way to satisfy my still lingering craving for museum time than to go back to Gyeongju and spend a day in a place which markets itself as a ‘museum without walls?

Gyeongju was the capital of the Silla Kingdom for almost a thousand years. This included the ‘three kingdoms period’ and the early part of the era of a unified Korea, the Unified Silla period. After political control passed to the Goryeo dynasty, the capital was moved elsewhere and this area fell out of favour with kings and rulers for many centuries. It was largely restored in the 1970s and 1980s and also protected from the rapid development which was overtaking the rest of the country at the time. As a result, it remains a smaller city but one which more truly resembles and celebrates a Korea of earlier times, rather than just any other rapidly developed Asian city.

Last time we went to Gyeongju, we didn’t leave Daegu until after 11am, which meant that the day was quite short before the sun set and the freezing began. This time I was doubly pressured because I had a function in the evening, so I decided to take the early train (9:43am). The downside of this is that it required me to get up early. Because I only start work late and don’t finish until late in the evening, my days generally do not start before 10am, so getting up at 7am (to have time to get ready and get all the way to the train station in time to buy a ticket, etc.) was a struggle. I almost gave up and went back to sleep. Luckily, ‘museum-fascination’ proved too strong and I dragged myself out of bed and I got to the station in time. In fact, I got there with 25 minutes to spare, so I wandered around and bought a hot dog for breakfast. Several people are probably judging me right now for choosing a Western food over a Korean one for breakfast. Sorry, but, while I may be able to handle kimchi and rice at most times, they’re too much for me first thing in the morning.

It was a chilly and partly cloudy day in Gyeongju when I arrived, an hour or so later. Cloudy not in a solidly overcast way. Instead, there were streaky, high clouds bringing with them the icy winds. There were a collection of overly-friendly taxi drivers at the station exit but, armed with my map, guide-book and a determination that this time I would not get lost, I set off on foot. As I walked along, I was struck again by what an incredible difference it makes not to have sky-scrapers everywhere. Part of the effort to restore and preserve this city in the 70s and 80s involved height restrictions on buildings near historically important places (i.e. most of Gyeongju), so most buildings are one or at most two storeys high. They also almost all have traditional Korean roofs, which are attractive, although the roofs on bus stops and electricity boxes are a little quirky.

I walked all the way past Anapji pond to get to the museum, having decided to start the day’s exploring at a distance from the station and then work my way back. It took me about 10 to 15 minutes of gentle walking to reach my first destination: Gyeongju National Museum.

The museum is one of the main attractions in Gyeongju as is apparently one of the best in Korea. And museums make me happy. The collection of this museum spans almost two millennia but is richest with regard to the Silla period due to two great sources of artefacts: the tombs of royals and noblemen which dot the whole of the area, the most prominent of which are gathered in the Tumili park and Anapji pond. This pond, or man-made lake, was completed in the year 674 and is valuable not only because it is pretty and is an important palace site but, and perhaps more importantly from a knowledge perspective, because when the lake was dredged in the 1970s, thousands of artefacts, ranging from metalwork and statues to a whole boat, were discovered.

Entrance to the museum is free. Having now seen the size and scope of their collection and having some sense of the work that must go into researching and preserving it, I am very impressed that they can manage to run as a free facility. Wherever they get their funding from, it must be somewhere or someone significantly large and significantly committed to history.

The first thing I stopped to look at after picking up my free ticket and heading inside the grounds  was the Divine Bell of King Seongdeok, part of the outdoor exhibition. This 18ton bronze bell was cast in 771AD, stands 3.75m high and is the largest Korean bell ever to be preserved. It was made in honour or memory of King Seongdeok (702 – 737AD). It also carries a stranger tale. It is said that when the bell was first cast, it would not ring. This huge bell, cast in honour of a great king, would not make a sound no matter what anyone tried. Eventually the bell had to be melted down again and  recast. But this time, so the legend says, a young child was sacrificed to give a sound to the bell and the bell rang out for the first time. It is said that the echo of her cries can still be hear when the bell is rung. Because of this it is also known as the ‘Emile’ bell, ’em-ee-leh’ resembling the traditional word for mother. When I heard it rung later in the day, it did have an eerie echo, which, for the more factually minded, may have something to do with the sound-tube at the top of the bell – apparently a unique feature of Korean bells. Pure historians who object to the mingling of myth and fact may want to stop reading now, as this is a crucial part of a social history approach and one of my slight dissatisfactions with this museum in general, but more on that later.

After wandering around the outdoor exhibition a little more, I headed inside. Before entering, however, I stopped to look at a replica wall of rock art outside the main hall of the museum. While my own country does not have as many castles and ancient tombs as some others, rock art is something with which I am fairly familiar. I was fascinated by this particular piece however. I have never before seen whales in rock art. It was bizarre. Most of the figures were fairly standard but there were distinct drawings of actual whales. A reminder, I suppose, of just how dependent the people of this area have been on the sea ever since they settled here.

As I walked inside, still chuckling at the unexpectedness of the whale rock art, one of the most annoying things possible happened: I was approached by a nice-enough-seeming Korean man who spoke English and eagerly offered to help me. When I politely refused his help, he admitted that he was a Jehovah’s Witness and tried to hand me a ‘watchtower’ pamphlet. I very firmly, and somewhat less politely, handed back his pamphlet and walked off. People are welcome to believe whatever they want but I object to being accosted by JWs in a museum of all places.

The main building or ‘archaeology hall’ of the museum is divided into four rooms. The first room contains artefacts dating from prehistoric to proto-three-kingdom times. These include pottery and weapons and basic implements for living. It’s not a vast collection but there are some interesting pieces. Given Korea’s recent (last few centuries) reputation as a ‘hermit kingdom’, for example, it was fascinating to see and read about the extensive interaction they had with neighbouring countries and kingdoms in their early history. Grey earthenware pottery, for instance, was first introduced very early on from China.

The second annoyance of the day began at this point. By some unpleasant twist of fate, I had apparently picked a day to visit the museum that coincided with the visits of at least one – but what felt like many – school trips. By school trips here I am not referring to groups of quiet, studious high-school learners. My meandering around the museum was accompanied by lines of small, loud, uninterested children, accompanied by a few adults who themselves seemed remarkably disinterested in what they were seeing. One of the reasons I love museums is that they tend to be quiet, peaceful places where one can think and contemplate and relax. This one was not. Instead, these lines of kids were rushed past each display case, moving too fast for any of them to really understand what they were seeing, while simultaneously forming an impenetrable wall which made it impossible for anyone else to see the displays at all. Added to this noise and chaos were several other Korean family groups who had also brought their small children to see the museum. I do not understand why people feel the need to drag small children around the main exhibits of a museum. This one, like many museums these days, has a whole children’s area full of interactive displays and high-tech learning opportunities. There is no reason for them to be dragged around the static displays they will not understand for at least another 10 years and which serve only to bore them to the point where they start running around and almost knocking over the glass cases of 1000 year old treasures.

Luckily, I am a determined museum-er, so apart from the slight, throbbing headache – the result of loud children and echo-ey rooms on top of limited sleep – I was able to patiently ignore them and, with some pushing and refusing to be moved by the seemingly inexorably lines of kids, see everything I wanted to see.

Two of the museums main rooms are dedicated to the Silla period and contain a range of artefacts mostly discovered in the excavation of various of the tombs in the area. These include jewellery, pottery, gold and silver and bronze cutlery and crockery and ornaments and particularly fascinating bits and pieces of glass and metal-work. Gold crowns, belts, crown ornaments and ‘chestlaces’ (which is apparently a word now) were clearly the fashion at the time, too. According to wikipedia (yes, I know, not the most reliable source in the world) there are only 10 fully gold crowns in the world, 8 of them from Korea and six from the Silla Kingdom. The most spectacular of these is a large crown and belt of gold with decoration of blue glass beads and comma-shaped jades (another definite favourite of the times – they were everywhere). This crown is large and spectacular and is given a whole alcove with special stand, background and lighting to show it off perfectly. It is of course also one of Korea’s National Treasures, although I still haven’t managed to figure out if it’s 191 or 188. It also appears to be fairly similar to/the same as the crown used in a hugely popular 2009 Korean TV series about the Silla Queen Seon-deok, making the crown itself and this museum more generally even more of a tourist hot-spot.

The crowns and crown ornaments (and gold caps and silver caps and gold chestlaces) were  fascinating but I was also interested in some of the other artefacts. One display included about 20 gold rings from the 5th or 6th century – mostly fairly plain rings that have survived beautifully and could so easily be wedding rings today. I loved the bronze three-legged pot which just made me want to imagine a group of Silla people making a potjie and watching rugby on a Saturday afternoon. Some of the pottery was also fascinating. One long-necked pot with little figures of snakes and frogs and people and animals (National Treasure 195, stoneware) from the 5th or 6th century, was particularly impressive. I was also intrigued to discover that the Silla rulers imported Roman glass.

A second room of Silla relics covers the later Silla period. The pottery and burial items begin to be more sophisticated here. There is also a wide array of slightly more complex weaponry and armour and horses seem to become particularly important. The armour even included armour for horses. This is also the period when burials became more sophisticated. Jar tombs were on display here – large clay jars for children’s or bone-burials – along with small funeral items and, a little heartbreakingly, what must have been children’s toys. I finally got to see some bronze and iron mirrors – I’ve always wondered about them – although I still don’t see how they worked as mirrors. There were also several figurines, including one of a man (civil-figure, male was all the explanation given) that looked exactly like a tiny gnome. There were of course also exquisitely made figures of the Chinese zodiac and a wealth of other bits and pieces.

As I was leaving this room, I passed through a small temporary display to celebrated the year of the Tiger. Lunar new year is in about two weeks and the new lunar year will be, according to the Korean calendar, the apparently auspicious ‘Year of the Tiger’. This was a very small display but included a few masks and a sculptures, as well as a beautiful blue and white porcelain jar from the Joseon period (18th century) with tiger and magpie images. There was also another rock art replica, this time including tigers as well as whales.

The final room of the main hall is dedicated to a collector who built up and later donated to the museum a collection of over 600 artefacts from this region. Some of them were stunning, some a bit random and some funny. There were daggers and hilts from long, long ago – in stone and later metal. Full sets of metal cutlery – chopsticks plus spoon. A very obviously duck-shaped pot/jar in grey earthenware from the proto-three kingdoms period. A particularly well-preserved and unique national treasure: a horse-back-riding-warrior-shaped double-cup. Horses were a prominent theme. There were many bits of horse-riding gear, horse-shaped buttons, a wide variety of horse-bells and even some ‘Lacquered stirrups’ – also a treasure (one level below national treasure). There was also a ‘pillow’. Made of steatite and from the Unified Silla period, this block of stone, with some faint carvings and perfectly straight edges had me giggling as I pictured what a good night’s sleep it must have given the people who owned it. There was also a lovely display of jewellery, that would have looked equally appropriate in any modern jewellery store window, and a display and explanation of roof tiles – I think I finally understand how Korean roofs are put together now.

Many of these artefacts  fall within the periods of the other rooms, but are kept separate because they belong to this specific collection and I imagine also because many of them are not accurately dated and do not have exact information about where they were found. Which brings me to my minor issue with the curators of this museum. I recognise completely the value of archaeology and the scientific assessment of artefacts. I feel, however, that sometimes the focus on science in the study of the past can go too far. I loved the collection at this museum. They have a huge number of really stunning pieces, all of which are well-maintained and documented. What was completely lacking for me, was any attempt to present the historical and particularly the social context of these pieces. With a fairly active imagination and a basic knowledge of the past, I was able to reconstruct some of how things might have happened, but without a more detailed understanding of the social structures and the manner of interaction between people and peoples at the time, it’s really hard for a visitor to turn these individual pieces into anything more than ‘some pretty art that’s kind of old and a few bits of bent armour’. This makes me sad. I think history is fascinating and I fully believe that a large part of the reason so few people are interested in it is that it is often presented badly. The display cases at the Gyeongju museum are all beautifully constructed and everything is elegantly-lit and appropriately labelled but it could just as easily be an art gallery as a museum.

I had the same problem with the Anapji hall, where I went next, although there was at least some effort here to visually show where the artefacts were found. The difference between the main building of the museum and the Anapji hall is that the majority of the artefacts in the former were excavated from burial sites, and so are probably things associated with the afterlife or treasures of royalty and noblemen, while the Anapji finds were gathered from the bottom of a lake, and so are more likely to be everyday items from the period. The lake or pond was part of a pleasure garden attached to the palace of the crown prince, where foreign dignitaries and important people were entertained, so it’s the everyday life of royalty, but it still represents something closer to the ordinary lives of people (and thus social history) than the burial finds. The period also spans several hundred years as the pond was created around 700AD and used until the mid-to late 900s. The artefacts range from toys and horse-wear to small statues and roof tiles and even some iron scissors which are thought to have been used in some superstitious ritual, although – frustratingly – no further information is given about this. I had a lovely time wandering around and imagining in a hall slightly less full of children than the previous one had been. It also made my later visit to Anapji pond all the richer.

After this, via a short walk around some impressive stone water-troughs and well-stones outside, I walked through the Art Hall. I know very little about Buddhism but was still able to appreciate the detail and effort that went into making some of these exquisitely crafted pieces. The displays were also great and a little more appropriate to the art than they had been to the artefacts in the previous two halls.

The guidebooks and the Korean tourism website suggest that you should allow at least an hour to see the museum. I spent just over two hours there and would probably have stayed longer, had it not been for the children. The collection is definitely worth visiting and, in spite of my issues with manner in which things are presented, it made me very happy to be wandering through history again.

Murphy’s Law and a Museum

Adventures, Daegu,

Every day for the past six months my bus trip to work has taken me past the Daegu National Museum and at least once a week I’ve thought that I should visit the museum. Until this week, however, I have been distracted by other new places and adventures and haven’t gotten there. January, it turns out, is a rather quiet month in Korea, or at least in Daegu, so this week I decided it was time for a museum-day.

I caught my usual bus (the one I normally take to school) and enjoyed the fact that I was taking the bus to somewhere other than work. I hopped off at the ‘Daegu National Museum’ stop and headed for my destination across the street. One of the things I have learnt about travelling in a foreign country where English is very definitely not the national language, is that it is often a good idea to do some research before heading out. I know some people prefer to travel spontaneously but on expeditions like this, along with things like Opera, where there is no guarantee of English information, I like to know what I’m going to see beforehand.

Like many museums, this one has a few artefacts in the garden area. One of these is 5-story stone pagoda from the early Goryeo period (918-1392), originally from the Jeongdosa Temple site. The pagoda is built in the style of pagodas from the earlier Unified Silla period (676-935). An inscription on the upper basement layer apparently says that it was made in the 22nd year of the reign of King Hyeong (1031). Before I came to Korea, I didn’t have a very clear idea of what a pagoda is but these days I can spot them a mile away. This one is like most of the others but is particularly pretty in it’s garden home outside the museum.

At this point, I tried to go inside and discovered the main doors all closed up. A vague memory of reading something about the Daegu Museum being closed for a while surfaced. Murphy’s law that when I finally decide to visit the museum it would be closed. No signs in English to indicate why it was closed or what was going on but there was a large banner advertising an exhibition of ‘National Treasures’. I was disappointed but not completely daunted, partly because the museum’s website – which never mentioned the closure, by the way – did mention an area where old tomb-structures are displayed, so I decided I could go and see that anyway. I headed in the direction I assumed, based on the map on the site, was most likely to take me to what I was looking for.

On the way I reached a square where children and adults were playing games. I remembered seeing something on the map about an area where people could try traditional Korean games. I stopped to watch for a bit. One of the games looked exactly like a hacky-sack-type traditional game I have watched many times in South Africa, except that they were kicking sparkly objects that looked like they may have come from a ‘my little pony’ set. Another game a Korean family was playing seemed to involve throwing sticks with the intention of successfully throwing them through one of three cylindrical goals.

As I watched I noticed, next to the game area, another banner and what looked like a second  entrance to the museum. Relieved that at least I would be able to see something, I headed towards the doors. Just inside the entrance was an information desk where a very friendly and non-English-speaking museum employee laboriously explained to me that I didn’t need to pay money. We exchanged big smiles and I went in. The building is very modern and spacious. I followed people down a passage. Banners at the top of the passage said ‘Reminiscing Daegu 1954’. Along the passage, on both sides, were pictures of Daegu in that year. The pictures were of ordinary things – families harvesting crops, women doing laundry, children playing – and terrible things, like buildings destroyed and many, many people standing in queues for food or water or assistance of some kind. 1954 was the year after the end of the Korean war, a war that devastated a lot of this country and particularly badly affected Daegu, where several battles were fought. The pictures were beautiful and moving just as art but they also represented a particular time in the history of this place and of the families of people I probably know. It was fascinating to be able to look into the life of Daegu just over 50 years ago. The place in the photographs is familiar – with the same mountains and scenery – but there were no skyscrapers or fast cars. Everyone in the photographs was ordinary and, to be honest, rural. Strange to think that this big city of millions of people didn’t exist in the not-very distant past and that ‘here’ consisted instead of farmland and a group of war-ravaged families just trying to survive.

At the end of the passage, I reached the ‘National Treasures’ exhibit. I am sad not to see a whole museum – the Daegu museum normally has 3 permanent exhibition halls ranging from archaeological displays to folk history – but these few treasures were still fascinating. ‘National Treasures‘ has a specific meaning here. These are artefacts and historical sites designated by the Korean government as important in the history of the country. A little like national monuments in South Africa, except that they can be anything, from a bit of china to a 4m high stone Buddha-statue. The Daegu National Museum is responsible for several treasures from this area.

A board at the entrance to the small exhibit room explained that the main exhibition hall of the museum is being renovated, which is why it is closed. There was a group of kids and parents with a tour-guide next to one display. I looked around the rest of the room. Some of the artefacts didn’t have English explanations, like a parchment-like document in one of the glass display cases. I stared at it for a while, willing it to reveal it’s secrets, but to no avail. There was also a musical instrument, which I assumed was the six-stringed Sitar to which the info board at the entrance had referred. I was struck by how long it was and wondered if it was played sitting with it across the lap or rested on the ground. There was also writing (in – I think – Chinese) carved along the side of the instrument. Next to this were two stone lions from a Buddhist temple, the date of which, from what I could gather, was around 300AD.

In the middle of the room, in another glass case, was a huge gold-ish dragon’s head. My minimal research had informed me that this was a ‘Dragon’s Head Flagstaff Finial’ from the 8th or 9th century. The flagpole outside the museum is modelled after the type of pole this one would have topped. Again, I was struck by the size. These ‘flagstaffs’ stood outside Buddhist temples and the ‘heads’ were set on wood and rested on stone foundations. The head was at least a metre high and looked solid. The replica model outside the museum is also extremely tall – almost as tall as the building . The wood must have been extremely strong and thick.

On the other side of the room were three small Buddhist statues. Buddhism has been an important factor in Korea for a long time, although Confucianism became the ruling national ideology during the Joseon Period (1382 – 1910). The middle one seemed fairly plain but the smaller two on either side (National treasures 183 and 184) were extremely detailed and delicate. The statues were roughly 30cm high. According to the information cards, they are both Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva in gilt-bronze from Bonghan-dong in Gumi, dated to the 7th century (late three kingdoms period). They were apparently made separately around the same time.

Against the back wall was another display. Once all the crowds and the guide moved on, I stopped to look at it. For me, it was the highlight. All the objects in this display were found in a tortoise-shaped box during a repair of a pagoda at Songlimsa Temple in 1959. The box contained a variety of artefacts, including various pieces of jade jewellery and a lidded, decorated box. It also contained a gilt-bronze and glass, palace-shaped Sarira Case. Sarira is not a term with which I am familiar but wikipedia suggests it has something to do with cremation. The tortoise-shaped box also contained what are assumed to be the decorative parts of a crown, also in gilt-bronze. It sparkled in the lights of the display, an invitation to imagination, especially in conjunction with all the other artefacts found with it, found just at a point in time when small kingdoms across the Korean peninsula were falling as the three great kingdoms were slowly brought together into one nation.

I did try and find the ‘relic park’ after visiting the National Treasures exhibit but managed, inevitably, to take the wrong path. I’m sad that I wasn’t able to see the whole museum, and am determined to visit another museum soon satisfy the urge escape for a little longer into the past, but I am glad I got to see these amazing artefacts and I’ll be back just as soon as I can figure out when the whole museum opens to the public again.