Weekend 27 of 52.

Hyehwa, Lock Museum, Kokdu Museum

We've been to Hyehwa once before to visit Cafe Mano for patbingsu and milkshakes. Yum. We went back again to visit Cafe Mano for milkshakes and tiramisu. But also so that we could go to the Lock Museum and the Kokdu Museum.

Locks are locks. No further explanation necessary, but I will say that the curators shyly spoke excellent English and gave us a quality book of Seoul Museum tourist info (as part of the "Infinitely Yours, Seoul" campaign, which I think is really cute).

Kokdu, though, are wooden figurines of angel-type beings that decorate funeral biers. They act as guides to and guardians of the deceased as they wander their way to heaven. The Kokdu stories reminded me of Dante's Inferno (which I only read for a college class, so don't think I'm too terribly smart or cultured). The funeral bier is also decorated with phoenix and dragon carvings. We learned of dragons, that they follow the path of the rain and are able to descend into the depths of the seas and then ascend to the heights of the heavens. As such, dragons are fantastic afterlife companions (and not at all the combatants that skewed Western lore would have you believe), fighting off foes and having all that inside information.

All of the descriptions in the Standing Exhibit were translated proficiently into English. There is also a dynamic Special Exhibit that presents Kokdu in varying modern art genres. Transient as it is, this exhibit's explanations are only in Korean. When we went, it contained manual wheel animations (called phenakistoscope) and crank puppets (like this, but in real life). The museum is small and it is not free (W5000 per adult), but it was different from all the other museums we've been to, and we really enjoyed it.