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Description
The more important a building is, the more statues are on top of the roof to protect against bad spirits. (Bad as in being capable of bad things but are not bad in intent or personality... not inherently bad). The statues are always the same thing in a particular order. I believe this is the most important something can be marked because it goes up to all the statues from the dragon to the most powerful good spirit/ god which is the mountain monkey god spirit. You can see a water spirit and others that I can't remember ( I might be mixing two different things up. Mountain God and monkey king god... are either the same or are two different... My memory isn't too clear about it) .

More about spirits: there are many things around that are about warding off bad spirits (guard statues who might be dogs or something else. I even saw one that was a huge turtle) and many things to invite good spirits. Even though they are called good or bad spirits, they are not considered to be actually good or bad in intent. A disease spirit may come into a town and make everyone sick but it is not doing so out of malice or stuff like that. The spirit is just doing its job. Same goes for other types. This is Korean Shamanism btw. Very fascinating~

Oh, a cool detail--look underneath the roof at the beams. All of the colors and all the detail in the paint shows the power and money of the rulers since it is so much work and detail put into the decoration. You will see more of this later

See more pictures of this same palace:

Seoul, South Korea, March 2019

Description
The more important a building is, the more statues are on top of the roof to protect against bad spirits. (Bad as in being capable of bad things but are not bad in intent or personality... not inherently bad). The statues are always the same thing in a particular order. I believe this is the most important something can be marked because it goes up to all the statues from the dragon to the most powerful good spirit/ god which is the mountain monkey god spirit. You can see a water spirit and others that I can't remember ( I might be mixing two different things up. Mountain God and monkey king god... are either the same or are two different... My memory isn't too clear about it) .

More about spirits: there are many things around that are about warding off bad spirits (guard statues who might be dogs or something else. I even saw one that was a huge turtle) and many things to invite good spirits. Even though they are called good or bad spirits, they are not considered to be actually good or bad in intent. A disease spirit may come into a town and make everyone sick but it is not doing so out of malice or stuff like that. The spirit is just doing its job. Same goes for other types. This is Korean Shamanism btw. Very fascinating~

Oh, a cool detail--look underneath the roof at the beams. All of the colors and all the detail in the paint shows the power and money of the rulers since it is so much work and detail put into the decoration. You will see more of this later

See more pictures of this same palace:

Seoul, South Korea, March 2019