The Yun Dong-ju Literature Museum: Two Water Tanks Behind One Square of Sky

By bus from Gyeongbokgung, then 74 metres

Yun Dong-ju Literature Museum directions: from Exit 3 of Gyeongbokgung Station (Line 3), take local bus 1020, 7022 or 7212 to the “Jahamun Gogae, Yun Dong-ju Poet’s Hill” stop (01-106, 01-107); from Exit 2 of Gwanghwamun Station (Line 5), bus 1020 or 7212. Address: 119 Changuimun-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul. Phone: 070-4531-4176.

The museum’s page on the Jongno Foundation for Arts and Culture website gives the way there by bus. From Exit 3 of Gyeongbokgung Station on Line 3, take the local bus 1020, 7022 or 7212 and get off at the “Jahamun Gogae, Yun Dong-ju Poet’s Hill” stop (01-106, 01-107). From Exit 2 of Gwanghwamun Station on Line 5, the 1020 and 7212 stop there too. By a map app’s walking route, the museum is 74 metres and a minute from the stop — and that is from the further of the two stops, one on each side of the road. Find on a map

You can walk up, too. The same walking route puts the museum 2,198 metres and 28 minutes from Exit 3 of Gyeongbokgung Station. Elena copies the figures down and smiles. There is no climb in that shot of the square sky. On screen, the museum is always what you see once you have arrived.

In Seoul’s bus-stop data, the same stop is listed as “Jahamun Gogae · Yun Dong-ju Literature Museum.” The museum’s page names the stop after the hill; the city’s data names it after the museum. Elena writes the two names side by side. One stop, pointing at two places at once. The address on the museum’s page is 119 Changuimun-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul.

A building that pushed the water on

The Yun Dong-ju Literature Museum opened in 2012, converted from the Cheongun water pressurising station and water tanks that had been abandoned at the foot of Inwangsan. A pressurising station puts pressure on slowing water so that it flows strongly again; the museum’s page calls the museum “a pressurising station for our souls.”

The museum doesn’t hide what the building used to be. Opened in 2012, its page says, the Yun Dong-ju Literature Museum was made from the Cheongun water pressurising station and water tanks that had been left abandoned at the foot of Inwangsan. It explains a pressurising station in a single line: a place that puts pressure on water that has slowed, so that it flows strongly again. Borrowing that idea, the page calls the museum “a pressurising station for our souls.” Find on a map

On the screens Elena remembers, the building is a neat white box. The Korea Tourism Organization’s published photographs show the same: a crisp-edged white building beside rough bedrock and a stone retaining wall, with low terraces of thinly stacked stone in front. White walls come out clean on screen. But that two tanks that once held water are joined to that white box is something no single front-on shot can tell you.

The page also says the building won the Korea Public Architecture Award in 2012 and the Seoul Architecture Award in 2014, and was designated a memorial facility in 2015 — adding that both the value of the space and its meaning are drawing attention. Elena writes the three lines one under another and underlines the last. The two awards are about the space. The designation is about the person the space remembers.

A white room for the notebook, not the camera

Gallery 1, “Siinchae” (the Poet’s House): a pure white space symbolising the poet’s untainted heart for poetry. Nine display stands hold photographs arranged in the order of his life, with facsimiles of his handwritten manuscripts.

The first room is Gallery 1, “Siinchae,” the Poet’s House. The museum describes it as a pure white space symbolising the poet’s untainted heart for poetry. On nine display stands, it says, photographs arranged in the order of his life sit alongside facsimiles of his handwritten manuscripts. Find on a map

The museum’s visitor notes contain one short line: photographs and video may be taken only in Gallery 2; photography is not allowed in Galleries 1 and 3. Reading it, Elena feels half of the day’s question answer itself. There was a reason the Yun Dong-ju Literature Museum on screen was always the same picture. Photography is allowed in only one room.

So in this room, Elena opens her notebook. The museum’s page passes on the account that while the poet was studying literature at Yonhi College, he lodged with his fellow writer Jeong Byeong-uk at the house of the novelist Kim Song (1909–1988) in Nusang-dong, Jongno-gu, and often climbed Inwangsan to shape his poems in the open air. It adds that “The Cross,” “The Wind Blows” and “Another Home” were written in this period.

Elena doesn’t copy out any lines of verse. She writes down three titles and the name of a mountain, Inwangsan. By the museum’s own account, the building stands at the foot of that same mountain. The mountain the poet used to climb from Nusang-dong, she adds in the margin — and this time it’s Elena standing on its slope.

The room with the square sky, and the water on its walls

Gallery 2, the “Open Well”: inspired by the well in Yun Dong-ju’s poem “Self-Portrait,” the top of a disused water tank was opened to make a courtyard, named the Open Well. Traces of the water once stored in the tank remain on the walls, evoking the passing of time and the layering of memory.

Gallery 2, the “Open Well,” is the room in that picture. According to the museum, it took its cue from the well in Yun Dong-ju’s poem “Self-Portrait”: the top of a disused water tank was opened up to make a courtyard, which was named the Open Well. The traces of the water once stored in the tank remain on the walls, the page goes on, letting you feel the passing of time and the layering of memory. Find on a map

Elena lists what makes the shot so smooth. Tilt the camera slightly towards the sky and the four walls become a square frame. No one is inside the frame, and the stains on the walls catch the light like grain. So far, these are conditions chosen by whoever holds the camera. The fourth condition was set by the museum: this is the only room where photographs are allowed. The picture keeps looking the same not only because people’s eyes are alike.

So what is left on the street? On screen, the stains on the walls are texture, there for mood. Read through the museum’s own sentence, they are a record — marks left by the water that once filled these walls. In the Korea Tourism Organization’s photograph, a narrow sloping walkway runs beside a floor of gravel and grass, and there is a door in the left-hand wall and another at the far end. That’s the part a shot of the square sky usually crops out. To Elena, the two doors read like a sign that this room isn’t a destination but a passage between.

The Closed Well — a room you can’t take home as a picture

Gallery 3, the “Closed Well”: a second disused water tank preserved in its original form, designed as a space for silence and reflection, where a film about the poet’s life and poetry is shown. The last screening in Gallery 3 is at 17:15.

The next room is Gallery 3, the “Closed Well.” The museum says it was made from a second disused water tank, preserved in its original form. Unlike its neighbour, whose top was opened, this one was left closed. Designed as a space for silence and reflection, it shows a film about the poet’s life and poetry; the last screening of the day starts at 17:15, the museum notes. Find on a map

Photography isn’t allowed here either, so Elena can’t take this room away as a picture. Instead she writes the two wells side by side in her notebook: the open well and the closed well. Two water tanks, one opened to the sky, one left shut. Only the open one ever reaches the screen. The closed one stays only in that room, in the time you spend there.

Outside the museum, its page points to two more places. Climb the steps beside the building and there’s a small rest area called Byeoltteurak; behind the museum, a walking path called Poet’s Hill follows the bends of the hillside upwards. By a map app’s walking route, the point the map uses for Poet’s Hill is 257 metres and three minutes from the museum. An article on the Seoul city government’s news site, Seoul Mediahub, says there is a stone on the hill carved with the poem “Prologue.”

On the hill, Elena opens her notebook again. Three lines are left: a pass you climb by bus, a building that once pushed slowing water back on its way, and two rooms where photography isn’t allowed. None of the three fits into the picture of the square sky.

That doesn’t make the picture wrong. It is the one room where the museum allows photography. The other two simply stay off screen, as the rules say they should. The three parts of “Seochon” pass through a market and a valley and end here, on this hill. On the last line, Elena writes: “The rooms I couldn’t photograph stay with me longest.”

(※ This article includes staged images created with AI.)