Sep 29th - Oct 2nd
In and near Paju City.


If you are in Seoul or near the Paju or Uijongbu area, you might want to take a look at the Yulgok (Yi I) Festival.

Here is a link to the Korean language announcment -- It has an itinerary.

There will be a parade in Paju City complete with traditional costumes for scholar-officials and court musicians and a whole lot more. At the Jaun Seowon in a fairly large, open spaceed park with plenty of greenery and fresh air near Paju, there will be a ceremony to honor the spirit of Yulgok and any other famous Korean scholars honored in the seowon's shrine. It will include people in traditional costumes doing traditional ceremonial rites and offerings.



The image above is mine I took of the map at the entrance to the large park. The map gives you an idea of how spread out it is. One thing I noticed I missed after my first year in Korea was the color green...



Yulgok is one of the two most famous Korean Confucian philosopher-statesmen. He is the guy, I believe, on the 5,000 won bill. The other famous scholar is Yi Hwang or T'oegye who is on the 1,000 won bill, I believe.

The Yulgok park is a great place for a picknick or stroll to get out of the city and congestion of Korean towns. It also has Yulgok's tomb and others of his ancestors, and it has a museum.



I tried to time my visit to the park with the festival in 2002, but I could never find out what date it was that year. It is held according to the lunar calendar.

If you are interested in Korean traditional history, this would be a good festival to see -- especially the parade and the Seowon ceremony. I'll try to read the Korean and tell what time they are supposed to happen.



A Seowon is a traditional private high school where young adults, mostly from the upper class, would study Neo-Confucianism. Those with ambition would study hard to take the Civil Service Exam at the palace which was a key to obtaining high government positions in the Chosun Dynasty which lasted from 1392 to 1910. But, just studying at the local schools carried with it some level of prestige, and since the students were already from fairly well-to-do families or families that had produced scholars in the last few generations, being a “scholar” gave you some position of importance in the local community.



The Seowons were also centered around worship/respect for one or two famous Korean Confucianists - like Yulgok. In the school's compound, a portrait of one or more of these famous men would hang, and at least twice a year, in the spring and fall, the local scholars and such would come to offer sacrifices of food and wine and bowing to the portrait and I believe the spirit tablet of these famous dead guys.

The Seowons also became centers for factional politics in the middle of the Chosun dynasty when the were generally founded.

Before, Confucian eduction for a limited percentage of the locals was done in Hyanggyos. These were started the same way --- set up by scholar-officials with money who wanted to promote Confucianisation of Korean society. But, early in the new dynasty, in the early 1400s, the new government make the schools official and set out to have one school located in every district in the nation - including far away Cheju Island. That is a remarkable thing for Korean society.

The state schools, however, suffered during a series of 4 purges of scholar-officials from 1498 to 1545, and then the vast majority of Korean administrative structures were destoryed in the two invasions by the Japanese in 1592 and 1597. The government was weakened, especially the Confucian oriented bureaucrats. So, many of them retired to the countryside to avoid the purges or to use their own resources to set up and renew Confucian learning. As they gained in strength, the private Seowon became centers of regional power and political conflict which continued until the Japanese colonized Korea beginning in the late 1800s.

You can find these Seowon and Hyanggyo scattered about Korea in rural and city locations. The Inchon Hyanggyo across from the World Cup Stadium is a good place to visit as well. It has right beside it a replica of a traditional government district office. I'll put something up about it soon.



The hyanggyo and seowon might not interest most people unless they are into history, because they are often very similiar in design to each other.

But, you really should try to catch them when they hold the big festivals like this one this weekend in Paju to honor Yulgok.

It will give a much better flavor of what Korean traditional culture was like....

If you go, and you happen to take some pictures and/or video, please let me know. I'd love to get copies of them, because this is a particular field of interest for me.  

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Thanks for the article. I am also interested in this type of history