Born a Prince, Fighting to Be King

This week on Arirang Travel Diaires, we're doing something lighter: opening the Joseon wardrobe. Before business cards, Instagram bios, or Linedkin profiles, what you wore on your head could reveal a surpring amount - whether you were married, what kind of word you did, whether you were mourning, and sometimes how much money you were willing to spend looking respectable. We'll look at the famous 갓, the world of 비녀 and women's hair ornaments, one government campaign against enormous hair extensions, and finally visit the 2026 Today's Tradition Festival, which opens today at Culture Station Seoul 284.

This week on Arirang Travel Diaries, we meet a real Joseon general whose life somehow became stranger after he died. Nam Yi was a military superstar in his twenties, rose to become Minister of War, and then was executed for treason in 1468 but later generations transformed him into an unjustly killed hero who could see ghosts, rescue women from evil sipirts, and eventually protect an entire Seoul neighborhood as a guardian deity. And the story is still alive today: the 44th Nam Yi General Shrine Festival begins tomorrow in Yongsan, with a shrine cemerony, military procession, and traditional shamanic ritual.

This week on Arirang Travel Diaries, we continue our royal-palace series by turning from the woman to the men. Being born a Joseon prince sounds like winning the lottery, bu the palace could look surprisingly like Survivor - with a little Game of Thrones mixed in: brothers, uncles, rival mothers, political alliances, and only one throne. Through Yi Bang-won, young King Danjong, and Gwanghaegun, we'll ask what it actually took for a royal son to survive long enough to become king - and whether becoming king meant you had really won.

This week on Arirang Travel Diaries, we enter the women's side of the Joseon royal palace and ask a deceptively simple question: how did someone actually become the king's wife? We'll meet Queen Inhyeon and Jang Hui-bin, revisit The Red Sleeve, and use the fictional palace mothers of Under the Queen's Umbrella to see why motherhood could become one of the most political jobs in the palace.

This week on Arirang Travel Diaries, we leave the royal palaces behind and step into the village '마당', where ordinary people sang, danced, played games, and sometimes put on masks to laugh at the people above them. We'll look at why masks could be sacred, funny, and surprisingly critical of society; experience some of the most memorable characters from Hahoe Byeolsingut Talnori; and connect that living tradition to this year's Andong International Maskdance Festival. We'll also make a quick pop-culture stop with Bridal Mask, because Korean storytellers are still fascinated by what becomes possible once someone hides their face.

This week on Arirang Travel Diaries, we celebrate Hangeul Day by going back to the surprising story behind Korea's alphabet. In 15th-century Joseon, King Sejong decided that ordinary people needed a writing system that actually matched the Korean language; then faced opposition from scholars who thought creating easy new letters was dangerous. We'll look at how the original 28 letters worked, the political fight behind them, the drama Deep Rooted Tree, and why 2026 is a particularly special Hangeul Day: 580 years since the promulgation of Hunminjeongeum and 100 years since Koreans first began officially commemorating the day.

This week on Arirang Travel Diaries, we finish our four-part King Jeongjo series in the place where his personal history became a physical landscape: Suwon Hwaseong. It began with the memory of his father Crown Prince Sado, grew into a new city built with scholars, soldiers, craftsmen and new technology, and became the stage for Jeongjo’s extraordinary 1795 journey with his mother Lady Hyegyeong. And the timing is perfect — because this weekend, that journey comes back to life at the 2026 Suwon Hwaseong Cultural Festival.

This week on Arirang Travel Diaries, we leave King Jeongjo’s private life and look at how he actually governed. Jeongjo had ambitious ideas, but being king did not automatically give him loyal officials, trusted soldiers, or the power to change old economic privileges, so he built institutions to do it. From 규장각 and 초계문신 to 장용영 and 신해통공, today we look at the machinery behind the reform king.

This week on Arirang Travel Diaries, we leave King Jeongjo’s private life and look at how he actually governed. Jeongjo had ambitious ideas, but being king did not automatically give him loyal officials, trusted soldiers, or the power to change old economic privileges, so he built institutions to do it. From 규장각 and 초계문신 to 장용영 and 신해통공, today we look at the machinery behind the reform king.

This week on Arirang Travel Diaries, we begin our new history and folklore chapter with King Jeongjo — not as a distant textbook figure, but as a prince shaped by family trauma, palace pressure, and survival. Through Lee Joon-ik’s film The Throne / 사도, we’ll look at Yeongjo as the ultimate “tiger parent king,” Sado as the son who broke under impossible expectations, and Jeongjo as the child who survived by becoming almost painfully disciplined. Before Jeongjo became the reforming king of Joseon, he first had to survive being Yi San.