Seodaemun Prison & Inwangsan Shrine

The Execution Stool

This tree is outside the execution chambers. It was the final thing many prisoners saw before they were executed. It's the oldest tree on the site.


The prisoners were responsible for making bricks while they were incarcerated. These are bricks that are in the courtyard today.



View of the prison from the top of the mountain/shrine.

Zen Rock


Today was unlike any other I have had in Korea. My friend and I headed out to Seodaemun Prison. This prison was built by the Japanese during their occupation of Korea. It was built in the late 1910's to house Koreans who were trying to start an independence movement. The prison was used to house Korean criminals all the way up until 1987.

The prison has numerous buildings that housed different types of prisoners. They showed prisoners being tortured in various ways including by electrocution. As we were going through the exhibit about how the independence fighters were tortured, one of the Korean workers came up to us and explained how the torture devices worked. There was a wooden box that had spikes in it that they would put people in and have the guards kick the box over and over, so the person would be punctured by the spikes many times.

The cells looked pretty large but as I read more I discovered that they would house up to 40 prisoners at a time and the prisoners had to take turns sleeping at night since there wasn't enough room for everyone.

There was also a reenactment of the Japanese court that independence fighters faced. The Koreans were not represented by attorneys and the only Korean that was in the room was the one that as on trial.

When it came to executing the prisoners, the prisoner would sit on a box with a noose around their neck and the box would fall through the floor killing the person. The Japanese would then take the bodies out of a secret tunnel to be buried.

It was a pretty intense experience. I have to keep reminding myself that all of these memories are still fresh in people's mind since the Japanese occupation only ended in 1945.

After this we headed to the Inwangsan Shamanism/Buddhist shrine which is at the top of the mountain next to the prison. It was quite a vertical climb. The tour book called it a walk so we were in flip flops which were not the right shoes for this hike. We made it up to the temple and drank some water and chilled out. A Korean woman came up and gave us tissues to to wipe our sweat away and offered us cigarettes. She was super cute. We headed further up the mountain and encountered many shrines and people praying along the way. There was a natural spring that we stopped at and we ran into the Korean woman again. She gave us some incense and showed us how we should whirl it around our head before sticking it in the shrine.

We passed the Seounbawi Rock or "Zen Rock" which is supposed to have the power to give sons to pregnant women. Most of the people that were praying here were women.

We made it to near the top and sat and looked out over the city. It was a beautiful view and was very peaceful and quiet. I was able to pick out some different neighborhoods (Gus) within in the city.

We climbed down and had some dinner and headed home for the night.