The 33rd session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee (WHC) ended last week with the inscription of 40 Joseon-era royal tombs as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. To mark the occasion as if I needed the excuse I made the journey down to Seoul to visit Seonjeongneung on Saturday. In commemoration of the WHC's decision and subsequent inscription, the Cultural Heritage Administration of Korea is waiving entrance fees to all the royal tombs through 12 July. Even without the free admission I would definitely encourage everyone to go and check out the tombs when time allows. How often can you say you've been to a UNESCO World Heritage Site?

In addition to the physical presence of the tombs - and the surrounding shrines devoted to the respective rulers - there's also a bit of intangible cultural heritage involved as well. Within the tomb complex at Seonjeongneung is Jaesil, where offerings are presented to members of the Joseon royal family. From the information sign at the building,

At present, Daedong-Jongyakwon of the Lees of Jeonju uses Jaesil as the main floored room in order to perform religious rites and burn incense for the royal tombs of Seongjeong the Great, Queen consort Jeonghyeon, and Jungjong the Great.

As noted above, Seonjeongneung contains the remains of two Joseon kings and one queen. King Seongjeong was the ninth ruler of the Joseon Dynasty (r. 1469-1494) and Queen consert Jeonghyeon - also known as Lady Yun - was his second wife. His first wife, Queen Gonghye of the Cheongju Han clan died in 1474 at the age of 18 and is buried in the eup of Munsan, in Paju. Queen Jeonghyeon is the mother of Yeonsangun - whose tomb I mention here.

The other tomb belongs to King Jungjong, eleventh ruler of the Joseon Dynasty (r. 1506-1544). Jungjong made efforts to reform the government following the decay of his his half-brother Yeonsangun's reign. However, he was forced to exile Jo Gwang-jo and execute Jo's followers in what later became known as the Gimyo Massacre of Scholars. (The Korean gets translated as "purge [massacre] of the Confucian literati" in my phone's electronic dictionary.) Of course, Seoswaewon in Jeollanam-do was built as a reaction to the Gimyo Massacre, so I guess some good did come out of it.

You can see more photos from my visit on Flickr here. To reach Seonjeongneung take Line 2 (Green) or the Bundang Line to Seulleung Station and leave through Exit 8. Follow the road for a few blocks and you'll be able to see the entrance to the tomb complex. Summer entrance hours are from 06:00-20:00 and viewing hours end at 21:00. The site is closed on Mondays.

I caught an interesting article from BBC Earth News last night that involves a study of 'super-colonies' among Linepithema humile (Argentine ants). The general idea behind the report is that transplanted ants from the Paraná River basin have set up massive-sized colonies stretching along the coasts of the Mediterranean (6,000km), southern California (900km), and western Japan. These ants all share a common genetic make-up, which means that groups from neighboring sites do not attack one another as they would within other ant populations. In particular, the chemical make-up of hydrocarbons on the ants' cuticles seems to hold the key in recognizing friend from foe.

According to the BBC piece, representatives from all of the super-colonies "rubbed antennae with one another and never became aggressive or tried to avoid one another". Meanwhile, those from 'smaller' colonies (in Catalonia, Spain and Kobe, Japan) were very aggressive toward their colonial brethren -- the ants taken from the super-colonies of the Mediterranean and western Japan. And what does "very aggressive" mean? Well, the San Diego Union-Tribune has a piece on Argentine ants that mentions research conducted by David Holway, Andrew V. Suarez, et al. and includes the following:

At territorial boundaries where ants of different colonies confront each other, full-fledged battles are frequent, murderous and epic on a miniature scale.

During one six-month study, for example, Thomas [Melissa Thomas, a University of California-San Diego postdoctoral fellow involved with the study] estimated that border skirmishes around one of the smaller colonies at Lake Hodges resulted in the deaths of at least 15 million workers.

One of my university friends, Jon, is in Korea for the summer to pursue physics-related research at Korea University. We met for dinner last week, and over the weekend we went out to Dobongsan (도봉산), near my home in Uijeongbu, for some mountain hiking. Spending five hours trekking between a few of the peaks left me feeling pretty exhausted come Sunday night, and may also help to explain my blogging silence over the past couple of days.

Yeah, we went up that. Fortunately, there are steel cables to make the process a little easier.
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Jon has more photos from our hike uploaded here.

Geolleung, the royal tomb of the 22nd Chosun Dynasty ruler King Jeongjo and his consort Queen Hyoui

The Chosun Ilbo recently reported that the 33rd session of the UNESCO World Heritage Commission is meeting in Seville, Spain for the period of 22-30 June 2009. Part of the docket for their meeting is a recommendation by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) that forty tombs, selected by Korea's Cultural Heritage Administration (CHA), be listed as World Heritage Sites. From the article:

The tombs are those of 27 Chosun kings and their queens. The tombs are a rare preservation of an entire royal lineage. The CHA last year applied to UNESCO for the registration of 40 of the 42 tombs, excluding two in the North Korean border city of Kaesong -- Jereung, the tomb of queen Sinui, the wife of the Chosun's founder king Taejo, and Hureung, the joint tomb of the Chosun's second king Jeongjong and queen Jeongan.

For those interested, there are a number of royal tombs in the far north of Seoul (Dobong-gu) and Uijeongbu that are well worth visiting. I've been meaning to get an entry posted about my problems finding the Twin Tombs of Princess Uihye and Han Gyeong-rok (의혜공주 와 한경록 쌍분묘) located in Uijeongbu, but before adding that to my site I'd like to find more information about Han Gyeong-rok. However, one of the other sites you can visit not far from my home is the royal tomb of Yeonsangun (연산군), the tenth king of the Joseon Dynasty. Some background history, courtesy of Wikipedia:

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Monday is the final day of class for my Intermediate II Korean language course, which meant we were given our take-home exams on Friday morning. I began working on mine earlier this evening - falling asleep as soon as I come home from work yesterday meant I didn't have the chance to work on it then - but the test appears to be way beyond my abilities. I've only been able to answer 7 of the 30 questions so far.

Before starting work on Friday I shared it with my academy director so he could see what I'd be tested on and he said that he could only answer two of the six questions on the first page. (The 30 questions on the test take up five pages in total.) While this should probably make me feel better about having problems it really only adds to my sense of hopelessness. The categories include: picking the word that doesn't belong from a group of terms, picking which sentence sounds most awkward from a series of four (note: not which one is wrong but which one is awkward), choosing the correct adverb for a fill-in-the-blank section, supplying the correct word that can be used in each of three sentences (i.e., the same word has to work in three different sentences), identifying the incorrect section of sentences and making the appropriate corrections, picking the correct response for a series of dialogue questions, and some reading comprehension questions. Ouch.

On the other hand, I've had a few conversations with my student's parents recently and a couple of days ago a taxi driver complimented me on my Korean accent of all things. It's also a bit easier to understand what's happening in the teacher's office when my co-teachers chat in Korean. Still, none of that is helping me with my test at the moment ...

Update: Just wanted to add that I had a somewhat odd dream a couple weeks back, in which I was telling someone that it's very easy to make past tense conjugations in French because all one needs to do is add ~았/었/였다 to the end. Huh.