Really!?

Tomorrow I'm going to attempt to take the Seoul subway system from Pyeongchon to Seoul and go visit the cultural art museum, the US embassy, and the castle from the last Korean dynasty. Legend has it that those who served the king and queen in the castle had to be virgins and how to swear an oath never to leave the castle but be bound inside its walls until their death. The only exception was some place of retirement where they could go to in their old age. Sounds to me like being exiled. The only male in the castle who was not castrated was the king. The men who guarded the castle were usually hired on before their puberty and they would castrate themselves. From what I've gathered they practiced this so that nobody would disrupt the bloodline of the king. Now since the men were not a hinderance to the king one has to wonder what about the female workers? Well, the king had his first wife who was the first queen, but if he found favor in another woman he would take her as his concubine and she would become second queen. There's no information to really trace how many queens there were, but the main goal of having so many was to produce boys. If the first queen could not produce a boy but the second queen could then that boy would be in line as the next king. From what I've heard this process led to a number of conspiracies within the castle walls in which certain queens would try to assassinate or plan an unfortunate ending for a young boy or man who was ahead of their son for throne.

Distrubing was the way the boys were castrated. After they castrated themselves the tip of a bird's feather was put into the tip of the boys' private part. Then a string was wraped around the end. Finally, they were put in an underground room and given no water so that they would not die from bleeding (or other medical stuff I know little about). Afterwards they would emerge and begin preparation to protect the king.

Previously, I mentioned the last queen has some dying last words to the Japanese. Supposedly, they wanted her and her people to bow down to not only Japan, but Japanese culture and way of life. She said something like, "I will never submit, I am the mother of Korea." She said this to indicate that as the leader of Korea how could she ever acknowledge another culture over her own and that Korean culture will always remain in the land that the Japanese would never submit her or her people to their ways.

More to come...