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| Grand Theater entrance |
I convinced my husband to take me to see an English performance of
Notre Dame de Paris at the theater. We have seen two performances at the Daegu Opera House, both in Korean, so it was wonderful to have a chance to see an English performance. After a short subway ride we emerged from below to locate the theater. The center is named for an old king,
Sejong the Great, who was the inventor of the modern Korean alphabet, Hangul. Up till the invention of Hangul, only the highest classes were literate due to the complexity of the Chinese based system (called Hanja) in use. Sejong wanted all the people to be literate, so he developed the Hangul system which is phonetic based. It is a very simple system; I taught myself to read it easily. As I was teaching my daughter how to read English at the same time, I had a good comparison, and I could see how insane the English language is to learn!
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Statue of Sejong with Gyeongbuk Palace gate in background.
It was dusk, so bad lighting. |
It was a fantastic performance; we thoroughly enjoyed it!
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| Before the show. |
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| Small glimpse of the theater; seats 3,000 +. |
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| Intermission. |
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| The cast doing a little encore performace. |
After the show we walked over to Insadong, the artsy side of Seoul, for dinner at a Korean restaurant.
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| The alley our restaurant was in. |
