Where the Kings Actually Lived: Seoul's Six Royal Addresses

Standing outside Gyeongbokgung for ten years, I answered one question more often than any other: which building did the king sleep in? People point at Geunjeongjeon, the great throne hall on its double stone terrace, and assume the answer is somewhere just behind it.

For most of the Joseon dynasty, the honest answer was: not here. Not even in this palace.

The court always kept two palaces

Joseon ran what historians call the two-palace system. There was a beopgung, the primary palace, and an igung, a secondary one held in readiness. The point was continuity. Fire, epidemic, renovation, a coup — any of these could make a palace unusable overnight, and the state was not going to depend on a single set of buildings.

Gyeongbokgung was the beopgung from 1395. Changdeokgung was built as the igung in 1405, by King Taejong — who then proceeded to live in it himself for the next thirteen years. The pattern was set almost immediately. The primary palace held the dynasty’s formal authority; the secondary one held the king.

This is also why the palaces differ so much in plan. Gyeongbokgung follows jeonjo-huchim — court in front, residence behind — on a rigid north-south axis across flat ground. It is the one Joseon palace that observes that Confucian formality strictly, precisely because it was the palace that had to look like a palace. Changdeokgung bends around the foothills of Eungbong and puts its throne hall where you cannot see it from the gate.

1592, and the 270 years that followed

In 1592 the Japanese invasions burned every palace in Hanyang. This is the hinge of the whole story, and it is the fact that reorders everything visitors think they know about Gyeongbokgung.

The court did not rebuild the main palace. It rebuilt Changdeokgung, in 1610, and Gwanghaegun moved in five years later. Gyeongbokgung was left as bare ground. Reconstruction was raised and dropped repeatedly — geomancers judged the site inauspicious, and it carried a bad political memory, not least the deposition of Danjong.

So for the entire later half of the dynasty, the palace that ran Korea was Changdeokgung, with Changgyeonggung attached to it as one continuous precinct — together the Donggwol, the Eastern Palace — and Gyeonghuigung standing opposite as the Seogwol, the Western Palace.

Rebuilding Gyeongbokgung finally began in 1865, driven by Grand Queen Dowager Sinjeong, who was then regent, and executed by Heungseon Daewongun. Work finished at the end of 1867 and Gojong moved in in 1868.

It was his address, on and off, for 28 years — a fire in 1876 sent him to Changdeokgung for most of a decade before he returned in 1885. In February 1896 he fled to the Russian legation, and when he returned in 1897 he went to Gyeongungung — today’s Deoksugung — not to Gyeongbokgung. No Korean monarch ever lived in Gyeongbokgung again.

The six addresses

Only Unhyeongung on this list is not one of the five palaces. It is here because it is the sixth royal address in walking distance, and because a king did grow up in it.

Site	Origin	What it actually was	Fee	Closed
Gyeongbokgung	1395	The palace of record. Ceremony, legitimacy, the formal seat	3,000 won	Tuesday
Changdeokgung	1405	Built as the spare, used as the home for most of the dynasty	3,000 won	Monday
Changgyeonggung	1418 / 1483	Family quarters. Dowagers, consorts, births and one famous death	1,000 won	Monday
Deoksugung	1593 / 1611	A borrowed mansion that twice became a palace in an emergency	1,000 won	Monday
Gyeonghuigung	from 1617	The western palace. Ten kings lived here; almost nothing survives	Free	Monday, 1 Jan
Unhyeongung	1864	Not a palace. The king's father's house, and the king's childhood home	Free	Monday

Note the split closing days. Gyeongbokgung closes Tuesday; everything else on this list closes Monday. That single asymmetry is responsible for more ruined itineraries than any other fact about Seoul.

Gyeongbokgung — the stage, not the house

What you walk through today is a 19th-century reconstruction that was then largely destroyed again. Through the 1910s the colonial administration auctioned off buildings to private buyers, and clearance for the 1915 industrial exhibition took some 4,000 bays. Between that, the Government-General construction and successive sales, more than 90 per cent of the palace was gone. In 1926 the Government-General building went up directly in front of Geunjeongjeon, blocking it. Its demolition began on 15 August 1995 and finished in November 1996.

Restoration has been running since the early 1990s and has brought back around a quarter of the Gojong-era buildings so far. Gwanghwamun was rebuilt in timber in 2010; its woldae terrace and haetae statues returned in October 2023. The long-range plan runs to 2045, by which point roughly 40 per cent should stand.

What to look at, knowing this: Geunjeongjeon and Gyeonghoeru are 1867. Heungnyemun in front of you is a 2001 reconstruction. Gangnyeongjeon and Gyotaejeon — the king’s and queen’s bedchambers — are 1990s rebuilds, because the originals were dismantled and carted across town to repair Changdeokgung after the fire there in 1917. Standing on the axis, you are looking at three different centuries at once.

Changdeokgung — the one that was lived in

Rebuilt in 1610, burned again in the 1623 coup, left derelict for 25 years, restored in 1647. Injeongjeon, the throne hall, is an 1804 rebuild — look for the five plum-blossom crests on the roof ridge, the emblem of the Korean Empire, and the Western floorboards and glazed windows fitted in the early 1900s. Donhwamun, the main gate, dates to 1609 and is the oldest surviving palace gate in Korea. Seonjeongjeon has the only blue-glazed tile roof left in any Korean palace.

The 1917 fire matters here. It started in an ondol flue and destroyed most of the inner court; the 1920 rebuild introduced electric light, tables, chairs, curtains and a motor garage. Changdeokgung is the palace where you can see the dynasty modernising and ending at the same time. The last imperial council, the one that gave away the country in August 1910, sat at Heungbokheon, an annexe of Daejojeon. The last of the royal family lived out their lives at Nakseonjae; Princess Deokhye died there in 1989.

Huwon, the rear garden, occupies around 60 per cent of the grounds. It is the reason Changdeokgung was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1997, and it is also the one part of the palace system that hanbok does not get you into free — a separate 5,000 won ticket and a timed reservation. I have written up the booking mechanics and the two palaces side by side in Gyeongbokgung or Changdeokgung.

Changgyeonggung — where the family actually was

It began in 1418 as Suganggung, built by Sejong as a retirement house for his abdicated father Taejong. In 1483 Seongjong expanded it for three royal dowagers — his grandmother, mother and aunt — because Changdeokgung had run out of room, and renamed it Changgyeonggung.

That purpose is legible in the architecture. The throne hall, Myeongjeongjeon, is single-storey where Gyeongbokgung’s and Changdeokgung’s are two, and it faces east rather than south. It was rebuilt in 1616 and is the oldest surviving throne hall of any Joseon palace — the one building on this whole list where you are looking at something genuinely old.

Jeongjo, Sunjo and Heonjong were all born here. So was Crown Prince Sado, and this is where he died: in 1762, in the courtyard of Munjeongjeon — then in use as a spirit hall under the name Hwiryeongjeon — Yeongjo stripped his son of rank and had him sealed into a rice chest. He died eight days later.

The colonial degradation was the most deliberate of any palace. Buildings came down from 1907, a zoo and botanical garden opened to the public in November 1909, and in 1911 the name was downgraded from Changgyeong-gung, palace, to Changgyeong-won, park. A road was cut through the ridge that had connected the grounds to Jongmyo. The zoo did not leave until 1983, which is also the year the name was restored. The 1909 Grand Greenhouse is still standing and is worth the walk.

Deoksugung — the emergency palace, twice

It was never designed as a palace. It was the mansion of Grand Prince Wolsan, and Seonjo moved into it in 1593 because he had come back to a capital in which every palace was ash. It was raised to palace status as Gyeongungung in 1611, demoted to “the West Palace” in 1618 when Gwanghaegun confined Queen Dowager Inmok there, and then handed back to its owners and forgotten for two and a half centuries.

It became a palace a second time under the same logic. Gojong returned from the Russian legation in 1897, made this his imperial palace, and proclaimed the Korean Empire. Everything distinctive here dates from that short window: Junghwajeon, the throne hall, built 1902 and rebuilt smaller after the 1904 fire; Jeonggwanheon, where Gojong drank coffee; Seokjojeon, the neoclassical stone building designed by an English architect and finished around 1910; Dondeokjeon, where Sunjong was enthroned in 1907 and which reopened in 2023 after a full reconstruction.

Gojong was forced to abdicate in 1907 — the palace was renamed Deoksugung, “virtuous longevity,” a courtesy title for a retired emperor — and he lived on at Hamnyeongjeon for twelve years until he died there in 1919. His funeral set off the March First Movement. Just outside the west wall, Jungmyeongjeon is where the 1905 treaty that removed Korea’s diplomatic sovereignty was forced through.

It is the smallest of the five palaces and open until 21:00 from Tuesday to Sunday, which makes it the easiest one to fit into an evening.

Gyeonghuigung — the palace that is mostly missing

This is the one that overturns expectations. Gyeonghuigung, begun by Gwanghaegun in 1617, was a secondary palace — and it was heavily lived in. Ten monarchs, from Injo to Cheoljong, resided here. Sukjong was born in it and died in it. Yeongjo spent roughly half his reign here and died here. Jeongjo was enthroned at its Sungjeongmun gate. For some 280 years it held one half of the two-palace system.

Then, in 1865, it was taken apart to supply timber and stone for the reconstruction of Gyeongbokgung. Almost everything was pulled down; the courtyard stones went into Gwanghwamun. The empty grounds were planted with mulberry trees. In 1910 a Japanese school was built on the site, and the surviving buildings were sold off one by one. The throne hall, Sungjeongjeon, went to a Japanese temple on Namsan in 1926 and was moved again in 1976 to the campus of Dongguk University, where it still stands, serving as the Buddhist hall Jeonggagwon. The main gate was carted off in the 1930s to the temple built to honour Itō Hirobumi, and later did duty as the front gate of the Shilla Hotel.

What you visit now, free of charge, is a reconstruction opened in 2002. The gate came back to the grounds in 1988, but not to its own site — the Salvation Army building stands there — so it sits elsewhere on the perimeter and faces south, where the original faced east. Of the historic buildings, essentially none stand in place. It is a strange, quiet site, and it is the clearest thing in Seoul about what was lost.

Unhyeongung — not a palace at all

The name ends in gung, which misleads people constantly. Unhyeongung was a private house: the residence of Heungseon Daewongun, and the home where Gojong lived until he was twelve. A future king’s pre-accession residence was styled a bongung by convention, which is where the name comes from — “Unhyeon” being the hill in front of the royal astronomy bureau.

It was enlarged the month after Gojong’s accession in 1863. Noandang and Norakdang were finished in 1864, Irodang added in 1869. Gojong and the future Empress Myeongseong held their wedding rite at Norakdang in the third lunar month of 1866; the official record puts 1,641 attendants and 700 horses into that day. The Daewongun ran the country from Noandang for a decade, later lived there in something close to house arrest, and died in it.

Once it covered what is now Duksung Women’s University, a primary school and several city blocks. What survives is 16,646 square metres and four buildings. It takes half an hour, it costs nothing, and it is open on Tuesdays when Gyeongbokgung is not — the reasoning is in The Royal Residence That Is Always Free.

What this changes about a visit

A workable two-day version: Gyeongbokgung with the guard ceremony at 10:00, then walk to Changgyeonggung and through into Changdeokgung on day one; Deoksugung and Jeongdong-gil in the late afternoon of day two, with Gyeonghuigung and Unhyeongung slotted around them, both free and both quick.

The integrated ticket is 6,000 won, covers the four paid palaces plus Jongmyo, and is valid six months. Or wear hanbok: all four paid palaces and Jongmyo are free, with Huwon the single exception. The criteria are simple — a jeogori top with an overlapping collar, plus a skirt or trousers as a set. A durumagi coat alone does not count, and neither does a jeogori over jeans. The full rules are in the hanbok free entry guide, and the arithmetic on ticket versus hanbok is in Is the Integrated Palace Pass Worth It.

For the institutional version of this story — why there are five palaces rather than one — see Why Seoul Has Five Palaces.

Every shop’s price list, included services and closing days are on this site, checked by an editor who spent ten years running a rental shop at Gyeongbokgung.

Fees, hours and ceremony times listed here are current as of the posting date and may change. Palace free-admission days are being revised in stages through 2026, so check the official notice shortly before your visit.

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