National Geographic

National Geographic opened their London retail store last week. For the armchair anthropologist inside all of us. Libby was kind enough to forward my copies here to Korea, Korea actually has a 700,000 year old history. If anyone finds themselves in London over the holidays please please please send me a postcard. I have seen the press coverage and was staring googly eyed from images of the new store.








About two weekends ago I went to the National Museum of Korea in Ichon and three floors of Korean/Eastern Asian History. The museum is broken up in a such a way that galleries flow well and they are reasonably organized based on time period and style of art/genre.
The first floor contained an Archaeological gallery filled with multiple artifacts from the paleolithic era. This I found to be less entertaining and quickly moved on to my favorite period in Korean history which is the development of the Three Kingdoms.
Now for a very brief history. . .
The first tribal settlements were formed in the Gojoseon Kingdom around 10th century BC. This Kingdom later fell to the Han Dynasty in China in 108BC. After the break up of the kingdom several walled tribal states developed that divided the peninsula. The tribal territories eventually developed into Three Kingdoms.

1. Goguryeo (37BC-668AD)
2. Baekje (18BC-660AD)
3. Silla (57BC-936 AD)

Each of the kingdoms had their own culture and different environments based on their geographic location. The museum does a wonderful display on the rule under the three kingdoms and in between the National Museum of Korea and the National Folk Museum there is plenty of understanding of the way of life under the three kingdom time period. Although each museum teaches about different aspects of the time periods.

In the seventh century the Silla defeated the other two kingdoms to lead to a unified peninsula. As the Silla Kingdom weakened the Goryeo Kingdom was established by Wang Geong and eventually overthrew the Silla. He named the Kingdom Goryeo and thus we have Korea.

Under this kingdom Buddhism flourished as well as the arts and philosophy. One branch of the National Museum of Korea had an entire gallery dedicated to Buddhas. They had several statues that we from outside of Korea including India and Japan but they are very clear about the Korean schools of Buddhism. For a brief timeline on pre 20th century Korea please look here.

The museum also has coverage of other Eastern cultures in the upper galleries. When you arrive upstairs there are a variety of exhibits including one completely dedicated to the development of Hangul and the logic behind the language. In addition they have a small section on Chinese porcelain and Indian artifacts as well as pieces from Vietnam and brief historical descriptions from these regions. I was disappointed that there was no exhibit or artifacts from Northwestern China or far Western Asia but that may be a bit overwhelming considering Asia is a rather large continent.

One of my favorite parts of the museum was the fine arts gallery on the third floor. They had a brief display of Korean Celadon which included some very early pieces of white porcelain. The aesthetics of this exhibit while very simple were amongst my favorites at the museum.