Namdaemun (남 대문) Gate

On this most recent trip to Seoul, I was determined to see Korean National Wonder #1. Although there doesn't seem to be any particular order to the numbering, the number 1 has a special appeal to the American competitive spirit in me, and I wanted to cross it off the list (in fact, it is tempting to see all of the KNT in order, but that's simply unworkable). My obliging cotravelers and I assumed it would be easy to find this historical building, expecting to find a crowd of tourists, or at least some helpful signs.

After searching for a half an hour, we stopped into a coffee shop and reconnoitered. Surely it was around here somewhere! Perhaps behind that enormous scaffoldlike structure. In fact, that scaffoldlike structure is exactly where it is supposed to be! This is what we were expecting to see:
Instead, this is what was there:

You can't really tell from the plexiglass barrier that surrounds it, but Namdaemun is now covered by an enormous scaffold. Underneath, it looks something like this:
Namdaemun was all but destroyed in 2008 by an arsonist. It is currently undergoing restoration in a fashion that bears testament to what I believe is the Korean national specialty: storing information. Mercifully, there are 182 pages of blueprints on file for Namdaemun, and the restoration will not significantly differ from the 600 year old original. What an astonishing mania the Koreans have for information, and in this case, what a miracle. If Monticello was burnt down, do the Americans have diagrams of every last shingle? Likely not.