What 'The East Palace' Actually Was — Donggung and the Korean Crown Prince

If you are watching the Netflix series The East Palace, the title is not a metaphor. Donggung (동궁, 東宮) was a real part of a real palace, and the word carried two meanings at once: the buildings where the crown prince lived and worked, and the crown prince himself.

The logic behind the name is worth knowing, because it explains the layout of every Joseon palace you will ever visit. East is the direction of sunrise. In the cosmology the court used, east corresponded to spring — the season of beginnings, of what is coming next. The heir was what came next. So his quarters went east of the throne hall, and over time the place and the person became the same word.

It was never one building

Donggung is a district, not a house. The crown prince slept, studied, held audiences and conducted ritual in separate structures, and the arrangement differed between palaces.

At Gyeongbokgung, the Donggung sits east of Geunjeongjeon, the main throne hall. Two buildings define it: Jaseondang (자선당) to the west, the living quarters of the prince and his wife, and Biheongak (비현각) to the east, where he worked. Both were destroyed during the Japanese colonial period and were rebuilt in 1999.

At Changdeokgung, the picture is more complicated, and more interesting.

The hall that is not there

The main hall of Changdeokgung’s Donggung was Junghuidang (중희당), built in 1782 under King Jeongjo. It stood near the southeastern corner of the palace, around the boundary with neighbouring Changgyeonggung.

It no longer exists.

This matters if you go looking for it. Visitors sometimes walk that stretch of Changdeokgung expecting the crown prince’s principal hall and find an empty platform and trees. The building is gone, and no reconstruction stands in its place.

What does survive is Seongjeonggak (성정각), southeast of Huijeongdang. This is where the crown prince studied — and “studied” understates it. He received seoyeon (서연), formal lectures on the Confucian classics, three times a day: morning, midday and evening. The name of the hall comes from the Great Learning, from the phrases seongui (성의, sincerity of intention) and jeongsim (정심, rectification of the mind). The building takes the first character of each.

Architecturally it is modest by palace standards — six bays across, two deep, with a hipped-and-gabled roof, two bays of wooden floor to the west, two rooms beside them, and a raised pavilion floor of three bays running north to south on the east side.

Why a study hall is the point

It is tempting to read Donggung as a residence. It functioned more like a school with a state attached.

A Joseon crown prince was not simply waiting. He was being formed, in public, on a schedule, under the eyes of officials whose job partly consisted of judging whether the formation was working. Three lectures a day, in a building named after sincerity and a rectified mind, is not decoration. It is the curriculum written into the architecture.

That is the tension worth carrying into any drama set in this space. The Donggung is the most watched address in the kingdom and the least free.

Visiting

Gyeongbokgung’s Donggung is the accessible one. From Geunjeongjeon the path splits three ways; the right-hand gate leads to Jaseondang and Biheongak. It is part of the standard route and needs no separate reservation.

Hours	09:00–18:00, last entry 17:30
Winter	09:00–17:30, last entry 17:00
Closed	Tuesdays — unless the Tuesday is a public holiday, in which case it opens

Changdeokgung’s Seongjeonggak is on the palace route as well. Go with the knowledge that you are seeing the study, not the seat.

One practical note that surprises most visitors: wearing hanbok gets you in free. The Royal Palaces and Tombs Center publishes a guideline for what counts, so it is worth reading before renting rather than after.

What this article does not claim

We do not know where the Netflix series was filmed. Online posts name several locations, but we have not found confirmation from the production or a public body, so we do not repeat them here. This article is about the historical Donggung, not the drama’s shooting locations.

If and when official confirmation appears, we will publish the locations separately and say who confirmed them.