Two centuries of ice, rain, summer heat and a civil war have reduced the ramparts of Suwon, a city just an hour's drive south of Seoul, to heaps of twisted rubble.
Originally designed as a new capital, a kind of Taj Mahal or Shalamar of gurgling water and aesthetically pleasing structures, the city was left to languish until the government rebuilt it in 1975 at a cost of over 3 billion won. Four-square, finely capped, with an air of spanking newness about them, the stones look well set for eternity. These sturdy remnants of the Yi dynasty are the perfect accompaniment to reconstructions of more fragile buildings to be found at the nearby Korean Folk Village.
Here is a slice of Korea's last kingdom brought down to human scale. The village is advertised as a "Living Museum," an expression that takes on fresh meaning when you stroll through the sprawling grounds, happening across blacksmiths, potters, weavers and herbalists, all giving the impression of being seriously engaged in their work. When I visited, the houses, rice stores and barns of the "village" had begun to weather nicely, acquiring a deceptive patina of age, and a real ginseng field had been laid out.