Gallery: Historic boarding schools seek top UNESCO marks

Fri, 01/27/2012 - 09:15 — Anonymous by Cin Woo Lee Seowons were the
dominant educational institutions of Korea's final dynasty -- the Joseon
Dynasty (1392-1897). Privately owned, exclusively male, and Confucian, these
elite boarding schools of yesteryear were the gathering place of the top
budding intellects in the Hermit Kingdom.  With such a high concentration of
the nation's cleverest minds, seowons became very powerful, with its
aristocratic members enjoying privileges like tax breaks. It was a recipe for
corruption, and seowons became a source of political cliques and party
squabbles. During the resign of King Gojong, the regent Heungsun Daewonkoon
issued a decree that abolished hundreds of seowons, excepting the few that
were officially recognized by the king. Today they are all relics. But if
that sounds sad, there's a bright side. A whopping 637 seowons are still
standing today, and the Korean media recently made much of the fact that nine
of the 637 were included on UNESCO's tentative list of potential World
Heritage sites earlier this month. The nine seowons may be relics, but at
least they'll be relevant relics.read more