Changdeokgung Secret Garden: 1828 royal banquet re-enacted — 3–4 Nov, 11am

The Changdeokgung Palace Office of the Korea Heritage Service and the World Ethnic Dance Institute at the Korea National University of Arts are staging a restoration performance of the 'Jinjakrye of the muja year of King Sunjo' at Yeongyeongdang Hall on 3 and 4 November. A jinjakrye (進爵禮) was a court ceremony in which officials offered wine and food to the king on a day of royal celebration. This one re-creates the banquet Crown Prince Hyomyeong gave at Yeongyeongdang in the sixth lunar month of 1828 — the 28th year of Sunjo, a muja year in the sexagenary cycle — to mark the 40th birthday of his mother, Queen Sunwon, following the court's own record of the event, the Sunjo muja jinjak uigwe (純祖戊子進爵儀軌). Anyone who is inside the Secret Garden can watch without a further ticket; since the garden is itself a capped, timed-entry area, getting a garden ticket is the whole challenge.

What kind of banquet was the jinjakrye?

'Muja' is simply the cyclical name of the year 1828. That summer Crown Prince Hyomyeong, who was governing as regent for his father, held a banquet at Yeongyeongdang for the 40th birthday of Queen Sunwon (1789–1857). Because the court compiled an uigwe — an illustrated protocol record — listing the order of ceremony, the dances, the music, the costumes, the dishes and the furnishings, it is possible nearly two centuries later to perform the same sequence in the same building. According to the Korea Heritage Service, the reconstruction is the work of Professor Emeritus Heo Young-il of the Korea National University of Arts and researchers at the World Ethnic Dance Institute, who studied the uigwe text; the Service stresses that it brings together a World Heritage site, Changdeokgung, and a Memory of the World inscription, the Joseon royal uigwe, in one performance.

This is not a first. A 2023 Korea Heritage Service press release said the Yeongyeongdang re-enactment began in 2006 and that year's was the ninth; in 2024, over 4–5 September, the full sequence of court dances in the uigwe was restored and a ceremonial robe (myeonbok) reconstructed from Crown Prince Hyomyeong's portrait appeared on stage for the first time. The photograph in this year's press release is from a September 2025 performance, so last year's edition also went ahead. Each year adds newly restored dances, costumes or objects, so no two editions are quite the same.

What is performed on each day — ten dances

This year ten of the seventeen dances are staged, split across the two days. The Changdeokgung Palace Office notice lists which dances fall on which day, so if there is one you want to see you can pick the date. The two programmes do not overlap: one day shows you half.

• Bakjeommu — butterflies fluttering golden wings among spring flowers (the press release's description).
• Chungwangho — a palace glowing gold in the morning sun, as an image of the glory of the throne and a peaceful reign (press release).
• Mangseonmun — according to the 2023 release, four boy dancers with peacock-feather fans; the name means 'the gate from which one gazes at the immortals'.
• Gongmangmu — a sword dance: two boy dancers in battle dress, each with two swords, facing one another.
• Musanhyang — a solo danced on a raised platform shaped like a bed.
• Chunaengjeon — a solo modelled on a nightingale, traditionally attributed to Crown Prince Hyomyeong's own time.

What is Yeongyeongdang?

Yeongyeongdang sits deep in the Secret Garden near the Aeryeonji pond: a house built in the style of a gentleman-scholar's residence, without the painted dancheong decoration of the palace halls, and divided — unusually for a palace — into a men's quarter (sarangchae) and a women's quarter (anchae). The Korea Heritage Service's heritage portal describes it as built around 1827–1828 by Crown Prince Hyomyeong to hold banquets for his parents; the records differ by a year on the date. The name Yeongyeong (演慶) means 'celebration spreading wide', and the hall was designated a Treasure on 16 August 2012. In other words, the performance returns a banquet to the house that was built to hold it.

East of the men's quarter is the study, Seonhyangjae, with brick walls and a sun awning, and on the terraced slope behind it stands the one-room pavilion Nongsujeong. Seen in turn with the guide after the performance, the three buildings show how the crown prince laid out the compound. Early November is also when the Secret Garden's foliage is at its deepest, so the red backdrop that appears in every photograph of this performance is there in real life.

How to get a Secret Garden ticket — booking windows and prices

Three things matter. The Secret Garden is a restricted, guided visit that starts at fixed times; each slot takes only 100 people; and a Secret Garden ticket is sold only together with a palace ticket. In November the Korean-language slots run on the hour from 10am to 3pm, six a day. Half of each slot — 50 tickets — opens on the palace's booking site at 10am six days before the visit date (not counting the date itself) and sells until the day before. The other 50 are sold at the garden ticket booth from 9am on the day. The Royal Palaces and Tombs Center warns that in April–May and October–November both the online and the same-day tickets sell out very fast, so for the performance the safe move is to book the 10am or 11am slot in advance.

Getting there, booking from abroad, and what to expect on the day

Take Seoul Subway Line 3 to Anguk Station (안국역) and leave by exit 3; Donhwamun, the main gate of Changdeokgung, is a five-minute walk east along Yulgok-ro. The Secret Garden has its own entrance inside the palace grounds, where the on-the-day tickets are sold and where groups assemble for their slot; the booking site asks you to be there 15 minutes before your entry time, and warns of long queues at both the booth and the gate in autumn. The palace is signed in English and the English-language Secret Garden tours are led by English-speaking guides. For booking, the palace ticket site (ticket.uforus.co.kr) has an English version: you register with an e-mail address as your ID, pay by credit card, can take up to five tickets per day, and either collect paper tickets at the booth or a kiosk or show the mobile ticket at the garden gate. Its instructions mention a passport or ID check for the foreign-language slots, which are reserved for non-Koreans; nothing in the rules stops a foreign visitor booking a Korean-language slot instead, and the 10:00 and 11:00 Korean slots are the ones that line up with an 11am performance. We did not complete a test registration, so we cannot say whether sign-up asks for a phone number; if it blocks you, the 50 same-day tickets per slot from 9am are the fallback. The performance itself is dance and music with no spoken text to follow.