Reconstruction
On the thirteenth day of the leap second lunar month in 1795, Bongsudang Hall at the temporary palace in Hwaseong became the setting for an extraordinary royal birthday banquet. King Jeongjo had escorted his mother, Lady Hyegyeong, from the capital during an eight-day journey that also included worship at Hyeollyungwon, the tomb of his father, Crown Prince Sado. Although commonly called her sixtieth-birthday banquet, the ceremony celebrated completion of the sixty-year calendrical cycle; it preceded her actual birthday later that year.
Lady Hyegyeong received the place of honor, while Jeongjo sat in an adjacent space. Royal women, male relatives, officials, musicians, dancers, and attendants occupied carefully ranked positions. Seven ritual cups were offered. Music, songs, court dances, decorated screens, textiles, artificial flowers, and food transformed filial devotion into public state ceremony. This arrangement was unusual because Lady Hyegyeong was the king’s mother but not a queen dowager, and because such a major royal banquet was held outside the capital.
The surviving protocol records seventy dishes on Lady Hyegyeong’s principal banquet table. Twenty-eight were rice cakes or confections, excluding fresh fruit and imported sweets. They included assorted steamed rice cakes, large and small yakgwa, mandugwa pastries, colored gangjeong and other puffed-rice sweets, and pressed dasik flavored with such ingredients as black sesame, pine pollen, chestnut, kudzu, and yam. Candied lotus root, citrus, quince, winter melon, ginger, pear, and balloon-flower root appeared among the jeonggwa. Jujube, chestnut, and ginger confections joined nuts, dried fruit, sweetened glutinous rice, meat, fish, soup, and dumpling preparations.
Many ceremonial foods were built into towers rather than served as ordinary portions. Twenty-one arrangements rose approximately 45 centimeters, and twenty of those were rice cakes or confections. Their firm textures made stacking practical, while contrasting red, white, yellow, green, and dark components produced an image of abundance. The protocol identifies foods, ingredients, vessels, quantities, and display heights, but generally does not provide complete recipes. Detailed reconstructions of preparation therefore rely partly on comparison with contemporary and near-contemporary cookbooks.
The banquet also projected a political message. Jeongjo presented filial piety as the foundation of benevolent government, then extended the celebration to local society through an elders’ banquet, rice distributions, and porridge for hungry residents. The exceptionally detailed uigwe and associated paintings preserve not merely a menu but an organized food system involving procurement, temporary kitchens, transport, rank-specific service, and reuse of banquet food. Modern reconstructions of Joseon royal cuisine draw heavily on such records, while yakgwa, gangjeong, dasik, jeonggwa, and tteok remain recognizable features of Korean celebrations today.
Historical context
Joseon was ruled by King Jeongjo, whose Hwaseong project combined a fortified city, royal palace, commerce, irrigation, and state-supported agriculture. The fortress was under construction from January 1794 to September 1796, so the 1795 banquet unfolded inside a major active building project. The protocol’s procession diagram records 1,779 people and 779 horses accompanying the royal party during the eight-day journey. Internationally, the Qing Qianlong emperor was nearing the end of his reign, while Europe was being transformed by the French Revolutionary Wars. In Korea, however, the event’s governing language remained Confucian: filial devotion, ordered hierarchy, ritual music, documented administration, and royal care for subjects.
Evidence
Written sources
StrongThe Wonhaeng eulmyo jeongni uigwe directly records the journey, ceremonial order, participants, food names, ingredients, vessels, quantities, table arrangements, and display heights.
Iconographic
StrongThe protocol illustrations and the associated Hwaseong procession screen document the spatial organization, service personnel, furnishings, musicians, dancers, and ranked seating. They are carefully designed court records rather than unmediated snapshots.
Recipe evidence
LimitedThe uigwe supplies names and ingredient accounts but usually omits complete cooking instructions. Recipe reconstructions depend on comparison with historical cookbooks and cannot always distinguish every named variant.
Food identification
StrongMajor categories and numerous named preparations—including rice cakes, yakgwa-type pastries, gangjeong, dasik, jeonggwa, cooked fruit-and-nut confections, fruit, meat, fish, soup, and dumplings—are explicitly recorded.
Dating
StrongThe feast is securely dated to the thirteenth day of the leap second lunar month of 1795. The principal surviving printed uigwe editions were compiled and distributed after the event.
Preparation method
ProbableStacking heights and some ingredient combinations are direct evidence, but frying, steaming, coating, molding, and candying methods are often reconstructed from appropriate historical recipe analogues.
Geographic attribution
StrongThe sources explicitly locate the banquet at Bongsudang Hall in Hwaseong Haenggung, in present-day Suwon.
Historical interpretation
ModerateThe interpretation of the banquet as a coordinated expression of filial piety, royal authority, and benevolent rule is supported by its ritual sequence and contemporary records, although the relative weight of personal and political motives remains interpretive.
Visual reconstruction
InterpretiveModern displays can reproduce documented dish counts, colors, vessels, and stacking heights, but exact textures, dimensions, recipes, and final appearances require reconstruction.
Sources
- 1.Jeongniso (Royal Office of Arrangement) (1797). Wonhaeng eulmyo jeongni uigwe (Royal Protocol of King Jeongjo’s Visit to Hwaseong in 1795). Jangseogak Digital Archive, Academy of Korean Studies, manuscript K2-2898. jsg.aks.ac.kr/dir/view?catePath=&dataId=JSG_K2-2Historical primary source
- 2.Eun Hye Park and Myung Hee Kim (2018). A Study of Byung-Gwa-Ryu (Korean Rice Cake and Cookie) in WonHeng Ulmyo Jeongri Euigwae. Journal of the East Asian Society of Dietary Life 28(1): 56–65. doi:10.17495/easdl.2018.2.28.1.56Scientific literature
- 3.Hye-ryeon Lim (2018). The Characteristics of Hwasung March and Bongsoodang Feast of Hyegyeonggung in 1795 (the 19th Year of King Jeongjo’s Reign). Jangseogak 40: 224–249. doi:10.25024/jsg.2018..40.224Scientific literature
- 4.Jaebin Yoo (2020). Political Implications of Court Art Under King Jeongjo: Aesthetics and Production of King Jeongjo’s Visit to Hwaseong. Korea Journal 60(3): 371–406. doi:10.25024/kj.2020.60.3.371Scientific literature
- 5.UNESCO (2007). Uigwe: The Royal Protocols of the Joseon Dynasty. Memory of the World Register. www.unesco.org/en/memory-world/uigwe-royal-protoModern synthesis
- 6.Korean Heritage Service (2024). Festive Foods. Korean Heritage. koreanheritage.kr/feature/view_pc.jsp?articleNo=Modern synthesis
