The Jongchinbu Well
Joseon dynasty
On the grass near the Jongchinbu halls sits a low round well head carved from a single block of granite, its rim smoothed by centuries of use and its mouth now filled with white pebbles. It is easy to walk past, and most visitors do, but it is one of the few things on the site that has never moved. The well served the officials of the royal clan office and the servants who worked around it, and it is a reminder that this corner of Seoul has been inhabited and busy for more than five hundred years.
Look at the shape. Korean well heads of the Joseon period were often carved as a single ring or as a square frame of fitted stones, and this one has the plain, heavy quality of workaday stonework rather than palace decoration. The slight lip at the top would have held a wooden cover; the grooves on the inside were worn by ropes and buckets. Around it the museum has left an open lawn, so the well reads almost like a sculpture in the grounds, which is probably how the architects intended it.
During the excavation for the museum, archaeologists recorded the foundations of Jongchinbu, the hospital of the colonial period and the military buildings that followed, and some of the finds are shown from time to time in the museum's displays about the site. The well is the one piece of that layered history you can touch. Stand by it and look across the courtyard to the glass galleries and the mountains, and the whole story of the site is in front of you.
Did You Know? The well head is the only structure on the site that has stayed in place through the royal office, the colonial hospital, the military headquarters and the museum.
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