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Gyeongungung was the palace where the king Gojong had stayed since February in 1897 when he returned from the Russian official residence. The palace had have its position as the emperor’s residence since Gojong ascended the throne in October, 1987 until he stepped down from the throne in 1907. Gyeongungung was the matrix and the central stage of Daehan Empire and it shared its fortune with the emperor Gojong. But, Gyeongungung was very different from Gyeongbokgung and Changdeokgung which had been constructed and used in Joseon dinasty in that its site is not square but shapeless, the traditional Korean buildings and the modern western ones are jumbled together there, and the foreign official sites and buildings are located inside the palace and so on. These distinctive features of Gyeongungung showed the harsh reality of Daehan Empire and Gojong that were holding back an urge just for their existence. Gojong escaped secretly to the Russian official residence and restored his safety and authority of a king. He stayed there for about a year and returned to Gyeongungung in February, 1897. The reason why he selected Gyeongungung as the place of returning and he delayed his returning was that Russian guards of the palace were not dispatched. To get rid of his insecurity, Gojong couldn’t help returning to Gyeongungung which was near to the Russian official residence and was surrounded by a lot of western official residences such as Great Britain, America and so on; and he just waited for the training of the palace guards by Russian drillmasters. In October, 1897, Gojong went to Wongudan from Gyeongungung, performed the enthronement ceremony of the emperor and declared the foundation of Daehan Empire. The way Daehan Empire and Gojong chose for their existence was to protect the empire from invasions of imperialistic nations including Japan by showing off its aspects as an independent state and a modern nation while adopting the traditional methods of East-Asian nations with emperors and western modern methods and maintaining the balance of power of the Great Powers. The most important thing was a palace in order to show off its status as an empire at home and abroad. They had to hasten to repair a palace because Gyeongungung barely had the stately buildings before Gojong returned to Gyeongungung. From 1900, when the regime of Daehan Empire started to take root, the project to expand a palace accelerated. Then in 1902, when Junghwajeon was complete, Gyeongungung could stand as a stately palace where emperor reside and perform the official work. However, it was not long before most major buildings were burned down to the ground due to a big fire in April, 1904. Even though there were confusions inside and outside of the empire after Russo-Japanese wars and difficulties in national budget at those times, Gojong could not leave Gyeongungung, so he immediately ordered to reconstruct the palace. Since then, Gojong was forced to step down his throne in 1907, and accordingly Gyeongungung lost its status as the empire palace, forced to change its name into Deoksugung. It virtually meant the end of Daehan Empire.