Gyeongbokgung Palace & National Folk Museum

Gyeongbokgung Palace is about a half block from our apartment. At the far end of it is the National Folk Museum. The museum is free if you know where the entrance is way up the street. We ended up buying palace tickets & going through, which was also fine - I really like this palace.

These first few pics are out of sequence, but they are the best & most important.

This is from the Gwanghwamun Citizen's Open Yard across the street, but a great view of the Gwanghwamun gate.

We followed some people through the bus entrance, which meant we were stuck for a minute among some large tour groups. Once we were in the open, we spotted an interesting sign telling us that the Folk Museum was straight down. We looked straight down. It was not there.
Inside the Gwanghwamun gate, looking back south, we saw some guards in interesting outfits. Most of them held what look to be naginata, but not sure what they are called in Korea(n).

During our wandering around to find out how to get in, we got to watch a changing of guard.

This area is my favorite part of the palace. The small standing stones in this courtyard are rank stones, called pumgyeseoks, indicating where the court officials were to stand according to their rank when the king held court.

Interesting history of this building & section here.

Here was a shot I took back in 1870 when Yi Myeong bok was having a budget meeting.

The National Folk Museum was in the far back corner of the palace grounds.

And... about here was where I had to go back & go to sleep (3pm).