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| Day 5: King Sejong's Tomb and the Cheongju Printing Museum |
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Our field trip starts today! We are taking a five day field trip to explore some of the historical sites around the rest of the Southern peninsula. Today we started out with a two-ish hour drive to see King Sejong’s Royal Tomb. When we got there Dr. Peterson explained that when entering tombs or other holy sites there are three paths. The central path is usually raised, or more ornate, and is designated for the spirits. Thus, as a humble person you enter on the right and walk the path on the right side to enter and then walk the path on the left side when you exit. You also pass through several gates on the way that guard against. As you pass through the gates, you are preparing yourself to be on sacred ground.
When we reached the tomb, there were stone statues of men, rams, and tigers all guarding the tomb, as well as a stone altar to offer the spirit food. King Sejong was the leader of the Choson dynasty who created the hangul alphabet for the common man. Before this point Koreans used Chinese characters, but the amount of time needed to thoroughly learn all of them meant that only scholars and elite were literate. King Sejong wanted to created a way of communicating that would be open to all. He also greatly encouraged scientific research and development and there are many useful inventions from this time that were either created by King Sejon himself or were constructed with the help of his patronage.
After we left the tomb, we headed to a different city for lunch which was a very traditional dish, chicken ginseng soup. Each of us received a bowl full of still boiling liquid with a small baby chicken that had been stuffed with rice, dates, chestnuts, and ginseng, and then boiled for hours. It was delicious. We had a few spare minutes after lunch and walked through some really neat shops and markets.
Then we headed to the Cheongju Printing Museum where the world’s first moveable type printing press was created in 1377, seventy-eight years prior to Gutenberg. We learned how the monks made the character stamps with beeswax, clay slurry, and bronze. The only Cheongju printing press left is currently in France. It’s a point of contention, but the French claim they bought it and have the receipt.
After exploring the process and the museum, we were led to the “experience room” to make our own books. Which sounds like fun, right? It wasn’t. It was neat to take paper and get an ink rubbing from a woodprint and it was fun to decorate our covers by rubbing them on woodboards with wax…but…there was a very specific way they wanted us to do everything. This was not an open, friendly crafts project. If we messed up they took the book/material out of our hand, impatiently did it for us, and handed it right back. If it wasn’t perfect it was not okay. And we soon found ourselves trapped, trying to perfectly compile our book so that we could get out of there. We made paper too – but I messed up a tiny bit when I did it myself and the woman scraped my work off, threw it back in the water and then did it for me…but made me “help” as she did everything for me. I was bummed because I thought it sounded like a lot of fun, but was really not.
Once we were done the bus took us to our hotel and we actually had tome time to crash – I took a thirty minute nap!! We enjoyed a great buffet dinner and were free. I walked around town with some other teachers – and called it a night! Another great day!
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