March 1 is a national holiday in Korea, commemorating Korea's struggle for independence against the Japanese imperial rule. My colleague and I started the day early by arriving at the National Museum of Korea (http://www.museum.go.kr/) at 9:30am. Located 15 minutes on foot from my place in Seoul, it just opened at the current site last October, and is reportedly the sixth largest in terms of its building size. We went though the historical gallery today, but I must say that it was interesting but not impressive. Koreans are extremely proud of their country, and rightfully so when you consider how much they have struggled to stay independent despite being sandwiched between two bigger neighbors to the east and west--Japan and China. However, its civilization has also been dwarfed by these two neighbors, so you find the artifacts that seem to be less refined versions from these two countries. (Never say this to a Korean, though, unless you plan to get into a fight.
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Korean alphabets Hangul currently in use was devised by the third king of Chosun dynastry Sejong in the 15th century. Although nowadays in South Korea students are still required to learn about 1000 Chinese characters by the time they graduate from high school, my colleague who has a master's degree in Korean literature still has a difficult time understanding the original documents on display, since many are written in traditional Chinese characters. Hanguls indicating the pronouciation of the characters do not give meanings. However, the meanings are evident to me because I read traditional Chinese. My colleague quipped that I could probably explaine better what had been written. I have heard that similar problems also happen in China since nowadays Chinese use the simplified characters. People encounter difficulty reading any book or document from before 1950.
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