On the roof, tiny sculptures of the Chinese Zodiac animals.
Partially obscured, the "Blue House," where the President lives. The rooftop is blue, like traditional Korean roofs.
Guardian duck statue at the entrance.
Gay-pride 한복 (hanbok).
One of the first Korean woodcuts, made by Buddhist monks and used to distribute scriptures. (@bird_esque @warmandbarky)
4 comments:
Oh my god! Look at the goddamned woodcut! I really can't imagine how much finesse it would require to cut out each of those characters. What if you fucked it up?
i know! and i thought carving "spear britney" on linoleum was hard.
and not only "how much finesse," but how much goddamned time.
Do you happen to know why blue? And whether modern Korean people can still read Chinese characters?
re: blue roof tiles, I'm not really sure. And neither are my co-workers. But there is speculation that it is supposed to symbolize the sky, and/or that it originated in the Chinese architectural influence on Korea.
re: Chinese characters, I can give you more detail. Some older people can read many Chinese characters, but it's really uncommon with the younger generations. Some buildings still use hanja (the Korean term for Chinese characters) in their signs, and there are occasional hanja in newspapers that are otherwise written entirely in hangul (the Korean script). The reason hanja are still sometimes used is that in pure hangul, the meaning is sometimes unclear (since it is a purely phonetic, not pictoral, script). So some words that are pronounced the same (and thus written the same in hangul) are differentiated from each other using hanja. I can talk lots more about these things if you want, but that seems to answer your question. :)
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