Empress Myeongseong Memorial Hall

Empress Myeongseong was the official wife of Gojong, the 26th king of Joseon and the first emperor of the Korean Empire. During her lifetime, she was known by the name Queen Min. After the founding of the Korean Empire, she was posthumously given the title of Myeongseong, the Great Empress.

The later Empress was of aristocratic background and in 1866 was chosen by the de facto Regent Heungseon Daewongun to marry his son, the future King Gojong. Seven years later his daughter-in-law and her Min clan forced him out of office. Daewongun was a conservative Confucian later implicated in unsuccessful rebellion against his daughter-in-law's faction. He believed in isolation of Joseon from all foreign contact as a means of preserving independence. She, by contrast, was a believer in gradual modernisation using Western and Chinese help. From 1873 to her assassination in 1895 she oversaw economic, military and governmental modernisation.