The 7 reviews to date of the Jongmyo Shrine are fairly “mixed” in terms of the degree of “value” which people felt they had obtained from their visit. One issue seems to be how best to “understand” and appreciate the site. We visited on a Saturday – the only day when visitors are allowed to wonder around unguided. It is perhaps worth highlighting here that Jongmyo has Tuesday as its closing day and is therefore a useful site for visiting on Mondays when the other WHS in/around Seoul are closed (The National and Palace Museums are also open then). Others have praised the guided aspect, though I must say that we found our guided tour of the Huwon at Changdeokgung something of a disappointment - too many people and not enough “meat” in the explanations (not unreasonable given the range of visitors and their interests - or lack thereof!), too long in some places and not enough in others, no ability to go back and re-look etc etc – we are not good “tour group” material! Whether we “missed out” regarding a Jongmyo tour we will, of course, never know (though I note that there are 2 different tour routes according to whether there are over or under 200 people! We only had 100 for the Huwon tour.)

In fact Jongmyo contains a full range of the usual bilingual metal signs we grew to know and love around Korea and they are excellently detailed (Nowadays I always photo such signs and they are proving a very useful resource on our return) - a problem, however, is the extent to which the buildings and the Jongmyo Jerye ceremony which takes place there are inextricably intertwined - one can’t be understood without the other. The separate buildings, the big open square, the row of closed doors, the kitchens etc etc all relate specifically to the ceremony - but how to understand it? To illustrate the problem I have deliberately not chosen a photo of the main Jeongjeon area – there are plenty of those on the Web – instead I show the 2 raised “inspection tables” of Chanmakilan and Seongsaengwi. Esoteric maybe, but worth knowing about within the overall context of the shrine and the Jerye! One of the buildings in Jongmyo has a video showing a recent ceremony, together with a spirit table “loaded” with replica plastic food and various pots and implements. But this didn’t really add a great deal for us. The video was in Korean with no obvious way of getting a different language (and anyway all the attendees were Korean!) and the “chairs” to “sit” on whilst viewing were at floor level – not good for ageing western joints and bones!

IMO, by far the best explanation of the shrine - its structure, purpose and history and of the ceremony which took/takes place there, is to be found in the excellent (and free) “National Palace Museum of Korea ” situated next to Gyeongbokgung Palace (The National Museum itself is well worth visiting too but is less good than the Palace Museum in respect of Jongmyo). I am sure that most tourists will visit it but, whilst the entry level on Floor 2 is good for the Joseon Palaces and kings etc, it is important to go down 2 further floors, past the display of the Korean Empire and the 2 imperial cars, to the basement level. There, room 7 is given over to the Jongmyo Shrine (Other things at that level are worth seeing also – there is a delightful reconstruction of an early 15th C Korean Water Clock for instance). As well as cabinets describing and explaining each of the implements/pots etc used in the ceremony, there are videos of it (this time with English subtitles!) and, best of all, CGI videos which first show the stages in the construction and extension of the shrine and then bring the ceremony to life by animating the relevant “Uigwe”. These are over 3000 documents (now all inscribed on the “Memory of the World” register) which, with incredible detail, describe the many Joseon court rituals in the form of both text and beautifully drawn/painted scenarios in which the location of every “actor” in the ritual is shown and their movements through the ceremony are described. They really lend themselves to animation and those in the museum also have English sub-titles. I had hoped that “National Museums of Korea” would have made the animations available on the Web but I can’t find any - perhaps I should have videoed them!