Gyeongbokgung Palace 2

Peering out from under the brightly painted roofs of some living quarters, the city peeking up from behind. Especially, the ugly 1970s soviet-style radio tower. The juxtaposition is particularly interesting given the korean obsession with concentrating areas into zones of particular function or feel. If you are in an industrial zone, it will be ALL INDUSTRY without thought for anything but INDUSTRY. Residential zones in Seoul simply house people. Not a lot of thought goes into planning for green spaces and aesthetic comforts. Seoul can seem like a very dirty, crowded, nightmare of slap-dab concrete and steel. On the otherhand, when space is allocated as a park, it becomes parkspace of the same zonal intensity. So I took a few pictures to explore the juxtaposition of the old, spacious palace and the new, dense city. It's actually quite amazing how effective the walls and greenery are used to provide the illusion of not being in the middle of a city of 11 million (with another 8 million in the suburbs). Tall buildings were visible from only a few locations within the palace grounds. top bottom
The north end of the southern courtyard was the only place where the juxtaposition was really visible... top bottom
Trying it again with me in the mix. Strangely, I was not jet lagged. The blank, blown-out expression here is more me trying to not get rained on and to ignore the people staring at the crazy round eye who thinks he can take a picture of himself by holding his camera in front of his face. Probably still a bit shaken from dodging riot police in front of city hall... (See the international log entry for details.) By the way, if you've never visted Dave Shameless' National Log and don't understand the context of the above link, click here. top bottom
And then I remembered that the digital camera had a timer... Accidently messed with the exposure when trying to figure it out... top bottom
Then the rain stopped, making it significantly easier to get the exposure corrected and the timer working... top bottom
A seemingly endless maze of walls and courtyards, punctuated by room-sized buildings. top bottom

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