Why Did Joseon Move Its Capital to Hanyang?

At a glance

• ⏳Founded 1392, capital moved 1394

  The new dynasty did not relocate its capital straight away.

• 🩸The move was decided after a purge

  The encyclopedia states that 'the move of the capital to Hanyang, too, was decided only after these events had been gone through.'

• 🏗️About two years from September 1394

  The state's strength went into building Jongmyo and the Sajik altars, palaces, government offices and the city wall.

• 🏷️The name changed mid-build

  Partway through the work, Hanyang-bu was renamed Hanseong-bu.

The new dynasty began in Gaegyeong and did not move immediately. The encyclopedia sets out the situation in between.

There had been a purge of those who opposed the founding, but speech and conduct denying or diminishing Yi Seong-gye's authority continued for quite some time.

Then, in 1394, when it emerged that some officials had divined the new dynasty's fortunes and suspicion followed that part of the Goryeo royal house was plotting rebellion, King Gongyang and his sons — and indeed the whole Goryeo royal house — were hunted down and all but a few were killed.

Immediately after that sentence comes this one: "The move of the capital to Hanyang, too, was decided only after these events had been gone through."

That ordering is half the answer. The move reads less like the execution of a plan to acquire a new capital than like a decision that became possible once the problem of getting clear of the old dynasty's base had been settled. Gaegyeong was Goryeo's capital and the ground of the Goryeo royal house and the interests bound up with it.

Once decided, the construction went ahead all at once.

From September 1394, for about two years, the state's strength went into a continuous programme of building at Hanyang: Jongmyo and the Sajik altars, palaces and the various government offices, and the city wall.

Read that list in its own order and central Seoul explains itself.

• Jongmyo — the shrine housing the spirit tablets of the kings and queens
• Sajik — the altars for sacrifices to the gods of land and grain
• The palaces — where the king lived and conducted government
• The government offices — the apparatus that ran the state
• The city wall — the circuit enclosing all of it

That Jongmyo and Sajik come before the palaces tells you what kind of dynasty this was. The installations that established the state's legitimacy came first; the ruler's residence came after. Even now, taking Gyeongbokgung as the reference point, Jongmyo lies to the east and the Sajik altars to the west.

The administrative name changed during the work as well: partway through, Hanyang-bu was renamed Hanseong-bu.

This is what explains why central Seoul's historic sites sit so close together.

Gyeongbokgung to Jongmyo, Jongmyo to Changdeokgung, and the wall enclosing all of it — they are walkable because they were built at once, to a single plan. They are not things that happened to collect as a city grew.

So a history day in Seoul works better arranged by sequence of meaning than by distance on a map. See one palace and then Jongmyo, and you see directly how a space for the living and a space for the dead were laid out inside one city.

The wall still runs along the ridges. It is more or less the only way to see with your own eyes how far this city was originally meant to extend.

Where the plan for Hanyang survives

• 

  Gyeongbokgung Palace

  The principal palace of the new capital, and the centre of the plan begun in 1394.

• 

  Jongmyo Shrine

  Jongmyo — the installation that comes before the palaces in the record's own list.

• 

  Hanyangdoseong

  The city wall. Walking a stretch shows how far the plan drew the city's edge.

• 

  Sungnyemun Gate

  The wall's southern main gate, now ringed by roads.

Frequently asked questions