How was Cheonggyecheon maintained during the Joseon Period?
The Seoul Museum of History presents a special exhibition, Stream Dredging: Connecting King and the People
Date: August 26 (Saturday), 2017–November 5 (Sunday), 2017
Venue: Special Exhibition Hall, Cheonggyecheon Museum
From Saturday, August 26, 2017, to Sunday, November 5, 2017, the Cheonggyecheon Museum presents a special exhibition on the dredging work of Cheonggyecheon Stream conducted during the Joseon Dynasty.
During the Joseon period, the overflow of the Cheonggyecheon Stream posed serious problems. Several kings of the Joseon Dynasty implemented a variety of policies to address the issue but failed to come up with a fundamental solution. It was King Yeongjo who took on the overhaul of the stream and led the dredging work on a massive scale. Dredging a stream means to deepen a waterway by removing the earth at its bottom. King Yeongjo’s project was more than a mere flood prevention campaign, but a breakthrough to solve the political and social problems inside Hanyang, the capital city of Korea of the time.
For this special exhibition, the Seoul Museum of History bought a court documentary painting titled Juncheongyecheop, previously privately owned, and will display it with copies of seven other Juncheoncheop paintings documenting the project, which have previously been shown to the public.
The exhibition will situate the management of Cheonggyecheon Stream in the wider context of the management of Hanyang, the capital city of the Joseon Dynasty, and explore the different meanings of the dredging project of the stream implemented by King Yeongjo.
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