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Seoul

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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(Han - yang), the capital of Korea (Chosen), situated in 37° 34' N. and 127° 6' E., at an altitude of 120 ft., 25 M. from Chemulpo, its seaport, and 4 from Mapu, its river-port. Pop. about 200,000. It lies in a basin among granite hills, nowhere exceeding 2627 ft., remarkable for their denudation and their abrupt black crags and pinnacles. A well-built, crenelated stone wall from 20 to 30 ft. high, about 11 m. in circuit, and pierced by 8 gateways with double-roofed gate towers, surrounds it. The native houses are built of stone or mud, deeply eaved, and either tiled or thatched. Above these rise the towers of the Roman Catholic cathedral, the high curved roofs of the royal audience halls, the palace gateways, and the showy buildings of the Russian and French legations. The antiquities are the Bell Tower, with a huge bronze bell dated 1468, a marble pagoda elaborately carved, but not of Korean workmanship, seven centuries old, and a "Turtle-Stone" of about the same date.

Seoul has some wide streets of shops, hundreds of narrow alleys, and is very fairly clean. It has an electric tramway 4 m. long, and is the centre of the railway system of the country.