Hidden SideThe Hidden Side of ArchitectureNo.082Published October 8, 2026

The plaza in front of Gwanghwamun has only foundation stones, no buildings, because the excavated site of Uijeongbu, Joseon's highest government office, was reburied to protect it and only marked

The Uijeongbu Site Historic Plaza, east of the main road in front of Gwanghwamun in Seoul, has no buildings, only foundation stones and outlines. Uijeongbu, built in 1398, kept its original site throughout the Joseon period; after a provincial office was built there in 1910, it lay underground for about a century until four excavations from 2016 revealed it. The Seoul Metropolitan Government gave the remains preservation treatment, covered them with soil again, and marked only their positions on top. We attached the institutional source to each sentence of the video.

✔Checked against the institution's original text △Original not available, checked through news reports ○Our interpretation or a linking sentence Tap a mark to open its sources. Tap a sentence to play the video from there. The video is narrated in Korean; the English text follows it sentence by sentence.

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Sources

Every source behind the script, including claims we checked and left out.

How we checked

Checked October 8, 2026. We compared the video against the original texts of the Korea Heritage Service press release on the Historic Site designation (September 24, 2020), the Seoul Metropolitan Government's Seoul in My Hand article on the trial opening of the Uijeongbu Site Historic Plaza (June 17, 2024), and the Seoul Metropolitan Government's public notices for October 2026. Every factual sentence in the video was confirmed by an institutional source, so there is no sentence confirmed only by news reports (△).
  • For the location of the 1910 Gyeonggi provincial office, the Seoul article says it was "built on the site of Uijeongbu," while the Korea Heritage Service press release says it "stood in front of the Uijeongbu Site." The video says only "In 1910, a provincial office rose there."
  • How long the US military government and the government annex used this land, and the year the Gyeonggi provincial office was torn down, were not found in institutional sources, so the video did not mention them.
  • "Seoul chose not to rebuild, but to keep it as found" paraphrases the Seoul original "preserving and maintaining the excavated remains in their original form." The original does not say whether rebuilding the halls was considered.
  • "About 8 years" from excavation to site work is the figure as of the June 2024 article.
  • The October 16 exhibition hall date comes from the "opening ceremony" entry in the Seoul Metropolitan Government's public notices for October 2026; we could not confirm the hall's location or contents.
  • Figures from citizen reporters' posts on the Seoul Metropolitan Government's Seoul in My Hand (founded in 1400, first confirmed in 2013, the year the Citizens' Open Yard was created, the year the office building was demolished, the number of artifacts) were not used.
  • We do not list personal names or street addresses.

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