[Viewpoint] The Cheongwadae We Never Knew

On holidays, Cheongwadae is always bustling with visitors. The surrounding area is congested with buses coming from various regions. The fact that it was the main stage of history centered around past presidents draws people here. It is curiosity and expectation. Numerous stories are hidden in the visible spaces, buildings, and trees of Cheongwadae. Each one is history, a source of imagination, and content material.

It does not stop there. Cheongwadae holds invisible stories beyond mere tales. Power struggles surrounding the supreme ruler, their glorious yet lonely lives, countless episodes with foreign heads of state... Many behind-the-scenes stories about people and events that unfolded in the core space of power remain veiled.

It has been over a year since the Blue House was opened to the public with the launch of the Yoon Suk-yeol administration. Photo by Yoon Dong-joo doso7@

Even the revealed stories often exist in fragments. The work of stringing each bead together to make a necklace is a new process of historical exploration. Exploring Cheongwadae contextually and comprehensively is connected to a diachronic understanding of history. Looking only at parts can easily miss the whole, and focusing only on cross-sections can lose the context.

Cheongwadae, which was once the site of a Goryeo palace, was not simply the 'rear garden of Gyeongbokgung Palace.' The time it genuinely existed as the 'rear garden' of Joseon's royal palace Gyeongbokgung was only about 30 years, not very long. It was a place where officials swore loyalty in a gathering called Hoemaengdan and was a space abandoned for a long time. In modern times, it was a site where sports days and archery competitions were frequently held. This was the case until 1939, when the Governor-General of Joseon’s residence was built on the Cheongwadae site. Only after that did Cheongwadae emerge as the core space of power.

Would you believe that Cheongwadae was once a protest site? In 1925, about 100 third-year students from Boseong High School resolved to go on a strike and held a protest at Gyeongmudae. In 1929, demonstrators supporting the Gwangju Student Independence Movement also gathered at Gyeongmudae.

The 744-year-old Japanese yew tree at Cheongwadae must have witnessed all of this. This Japanese yew, which has stood since the reign of King Chungnyeol of Goryeo, tells us the history of Cheongwadae not through words but through its very existence.

If we consider Baegaksan (Bukaksan) as part of the area, Cheongwadae is also related to the history of Korean marathon running. Son Ki-jeong, who won the gold medal at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, wrote in his autobiography My Country, My Marathon, "Every early morning, I ran up the nearby Samcheong-dong valley to the summit of Bukaksan, steaming with heat." Seo Yun-bok, who won the 1947 Boston Marathon, also testified, "I ran from Jeongneung valley to Samcheong Park, up to the top of Bukaksan~." Ham Ki-yong, the 1950 Boston Marathon winner, had a similar story.

Recently, three lectures on 'Cheongwadae, Historical Storytelling' were held at the Jeongdok Library in Jongno-gu, Seoul, for about 50 Seoul citizens. The trigger was a video uploaded last year on YouTube titled 'A Thousand Years of Cheongwadae History Summarized in 10 Minutes.' Now, only the final field trip remains. The more I study, the more new stories emerge. What I knew about Cheongwadae so far was just superficial. Even the stories related to the 'visible' were like that. The 'invisible stories' will be endless. And that is just the beginning of excavation from now on. We know too little about Cheongwadae.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.