보신각 Bosingak

보신각 (Bosingak) is a bell in the middle of Seoul. It's the bell that used to signal the opening and closing of the great gates. It's rung at 11:40 everyday with the exception of New Years where it's rung at midnight to literally ring in the new year.

I had read that on Tuesdays they let foreigners help ring the bell. Seoul residents can sign up online. I think that if you show up on any day they'll let you ring the bell because there were only about a dozen people the day we were there. We arrived early, a running theme of our trip because I was eager to get to everywhere. However, 11:40 came and went, so I don't know when the actually bell ringing time is. They let us up onto the second floor and explained the bell's history. The bell here is a reproduction as the original bell cracked I believe. It's in the National Museum.

After the everyone had a turn "helping" ring the bell (in reality, the helping is holding on to the support while the guard on the end is actually doing the pushing.) the guard struck the bell one last time. The docent told everyone to put their hand on the bell and make a wish. It was cool to feel the last vibrations. After we were done, we grabbed a cab to head to the furniture museum.