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Japanese Past Crime of Destruction and Plunder of Korean Cultural Assets (26)

2021-11-19

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Japanese Past Crime of Destruction and Plunder
of Korean Cultural Assets (26)

After the occupation of Korea, the Japanese imperialists set in full force to the destruction and incineration of Kyongbok Palace, the symbol and representative national architecture of the feudal Joson state and many other royal palaces.

They stamped out the appearance of the Kyongbok Palace by pulling down major buildings left in the royal palace and all the buildings within the area of 72 000 phyong and raising various museums in an area of 5200 phyong.

They built the building of the "government-general", a colonial ruling machine, within the Kyongbok Palace with an intention of demonstrating their colonial rule on Korea internally and externally and completely cutting the lifeline of the royal palace representing the tradition of the Korean nation. Moreover, they destroyed the structure of the palace with a disorderly lay-out of buildings.

Besides, they brought the relics from every place of the country into the compound of the Kyongbok Palace and opened the palace to the public from 1935 to get rid of the former appearance of the Korean imperial palace.

The Changgyong Palace, too, lost the appearance of an royal palace to turn to a zoo, botanical garden and exhibition of the relics including the Koryo celadons they dug illegally in the tombs of ancient Korean.