The Siheung-dong Ginkgos

Five roads meet at a point in Geumcheon-gu named, quite literally, Ginkgo Tree Intersection, and the trees that gave it the name are still standing at the center of it. Local accounts count either two or three ginkgos here, depending on which one you read, all reputed to be pushing 880 years old, though that figure comes from oral tradition and district registration rather than a scientific tree ring survey, so it is treated here as a well worn estimate rather than a proven fact. What is documented is the history underneath them. This was the site of Siheung Haenggung, a royal way station where King Jeongjo stopped overnight in the late 18th century on his repeated processions south to visit the tomb of his father, Crown Prince Sado, who had been executed by being sealed inside a rice chest on his grandfather's orders. Jeongjo's journeys here were recorded in exhaustive court detail, down to the meals served, and the ginkgos would already have been centuries old when his procession passed beneath them. The palace itself is gone, absorbed long ago into the ordinary streets of southern Seoul. The ginkgos are what is left of it, roots planted in what was once a royal courtyard and is now a traffic circle, still marking the spot where five roads meet.