Deoksugung: The Palace With Four Names

Deoksugung is the smallest of Seoul's five palaces and the easiest to fit into a day, which is why most visitors treat it as a pleasant hour beside City Hall. It is also the only one where a Joseon throne hall and a neoclassical stone building with a colonnade stand in the same compound, and that is not an accident of taste. It is the record of a state changing its own name.

The clearest way into this palace is through its names. It has had four, and each one belongs to a different political situation.

Opening hours, admission and the changing-of-the-guard schedule are on Deoksugung's own place page. This article is about what each of those four names meant.

At a glance

It began as a private house
The site was originally the private residence of Prince Wolsan, not a palace at all.
Jeongneung-dong detached palace
After the Imjin War, Seonjo used it as a temporary residence, and it was known by that name before being renamed Gyeongungung under Gwanghaegun.
1897: Gojong moves in
Gojong moved here from the Russian legation, after which Junghwajeon and the other halls were built.
1907: it becomes Deoksugung
After abdicating to Sunjong and remaining here, the palace was renamed Deoksugung.

Name one: a prince's house

The site was originally the private house of Prince Wolsan.

That is worth pausing on, because it makes Deoksugung structurally different from the other four palaces. Gyeongbokgung and Changdeokgung were planned as palaces on chosen ground. This one was a residence that a crisis turned into a palace, which is part of why its layout never acquired the long formal approach the others have.

Name two: an emergency address

The crisis was the Imjin War.

Every palace in the capital burned in 1592. When the king returned, there was nothing to return to. Seonjo used this house as a temporary residence, and it was called the Jeongneung-dong detached palace.

The Gyeongbokgung article tells the same moment from the other end: the palaces were gone, and the old house of Prince Wolsan in Jeongneung-dong was designated as the temporary royal residence. That is how today's Deoksugung became a palace at all — not by design, but because the designed ones had burned.

Under Gwanghaegun the name was changed to Gyeongungung. For most of the next 280 years the court was at Changdeokgung, and this compound was a secondary property.

Name three: the palace of an empire

Then in the 1890s Gyeongungung became the centre of the country, and the reason is one of the sharpest moments in Korean history.

In 1897 Gojong moved his residence here from the Russian legation, and from that point Junghwajeon and the other halls were built.

A king had been living in a foreign legation. Moving out of it and into this compound was itself a political statement, and what followed was a larger one. In 1897 the state took the name Daehan — the Korean Empire — and Gojong assumed the title of emperor. The distinction matters and is easy to blur: this was the same royal house, but the state's name and the ruler's title both changed, and the Korean Empire is recorded as its own unit with its own beginning and end. That story is told in full in the Korean Empire and the end of Joseon.

So when you stand in front of Junghwajeon, you are not looking at a Joseon throne hall in the ordinary sense. You are looking at the throne hall built for an empire that lasted thirteen years.

The palace's three-part structure follows from this period. It divides into the quarter holding the throne hall and the sleeping quarters, the quarter with Seonwonjeon, and the quarter with the Western-style Jungmyeongjeon.

Why there is a colonnade in a Joseon palace

The Western buildings are the most photographed part of Deoksugung and the most misread.

Seokjojeon and Jeonggwanheon remain inside the palace. Jungmyeongjeon, which stands outside the palace to the west beside what was the American consulate, was in private ownership and was bought by the heritage authority in 2007 and incorporated into Deoksugung.

They are not a later intrusion into an old palace. They belong to the same decade as Junghwajeon — an empire that was declaring itself a peer of other empires, building in the architectural language those empires used. Whether that project could have succeeded is a separate question, and the answer is in the dates: the empire ended in 1910.

Seokjojeon has an afterlife in this guide too. It housed the National Museum of Korea after the Korean War, when the collection came back from Busan.

Name four, and the end

The last roughly ten years of Gojong's reign made this palace the main stage of political turmoil. In 1907 he abdicated to Sunjong and remained here, and it was then that the palace was renamed Deoksugung.

The name is the ending. A palace renamed for a monarch who has stepped down is no longer the seat of a government; it is a residence for someone who used to hold one.

Hamnyeongjeon, built in 1897 as Gojong's sleeping quarters and rebuilt in 1904 after a fire, is the hall where Gojong died on 22 January 1919. His death falls weeks before the March 1st Movement, and the colonial period that surrounded it is in Korea under Japanese rule.

Walk from Junghwajeon to Seokjojeon and count the steps — it is a very short distance. Those two buildings were commissioned by the same court, in the same period, for the same state. Most visitors read them as "old Korea" and "Western influence" standing awkwardly together. They are better read as one government making one argument about what kind of country it intended to be.

Worth pairing with

Frequently asked questions

Why does Deoksugung have four names?

Because its role kept changing. It was the private house of Prince Wolsan, then the Jeongneung-dong detached palace when Seonjo used it as a temporary residence after the Imjin War, then Gyeongungung under Gwanghaegun, and finally Deoksugung after Gojong abdicated in 1907 and remained here.

Is Deoksugung a Joseon palace or a Korean Empire palace?

Both, in sequence. The site became a royal residence after 1592, but the halls most visitors see — Junghwajeon and the buildings around it — went up after Gojong moved here in 1897, when the state took the name Daehan and the ruler took the imperial title. The royal house was the same; the state's name and the monarch's title were not.

Why is there a Western-style stone building inside the palace?

Seokjojeon and Jeonggwanheon belong to the same period as the Korean Empire's other construction here. Jungmyeongjeon, west of the palace, was privately owned and was purchased by the heritage authority in 2007 and incorporated into Deoksugung.

Where did Gojong die?

At Hamnyeongjeon, on 22 January 1919. The hall had been built in 1897 as his sleeping quarters and was rebuilt in 1904 after a fire.

How does this palace connect to the National Museum of Korea?

Seokjojeon housed the national collection after the Korean War, once the objects evacuated to Busan were brought back to Seoul.