The National Folk Museum of Korea
Pagoda-shaped museum inside a royal palace, copied from Buddhist temples and slated for relocation.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the National Folk Museum of Korea, inside Seoul's Gyeongbokgung Palace, opens with two of Korea's most celebrated architects publicly denouncing the building in 1972 as a copy, pieced together from the stone platform and pagoda of two Buddhist temples. You'll hear why the design won a national competition anyway, who built it, and how it came to house this folk museum in 1993. The guide also follows the ongoing debate over whether a building shaped like a temple ever belonged inside a Confucian royal palace.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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