The 60th birthday festival at the temporary palace of Hwaseong for Lady Hong of Hyegyeong Palace, the greatest event during the rule of King Jeongjo

The temporary palace of Hwaseong was a special place for King Jeongjo. It was a residence set up so that the king might stay there after visiting the tomb of Crown Prince Sado in Suwon.
It was also a place where King Jeongjo would spend the rest of his life after retiring from the throne. This building initially had 30 rooms and up to 576 rooms in 1796, which was the largest temporary palace in the Joseon Dynasty.
King Jeongjo desired to stay after retire at Hwaseong since he wanted to live near to his father and develop new politics in there apart from his vassals who opposed his reformed policies.

1795 when Hwaseong was almost completely constructed, King Jeongjo lavished a startling amount of money on the 60th birthday festival held at the temporary palace of Hwaseong for Lady Hong of Hyegyeong Palace who is his biological mother. For the splendid party, the king stayed for 8 days along with his mother at Hwaseong.

Such a long stay of his at Hwaseong was because he wanted to console the spirit of his father who was killed in a pitiful manner and especially comfort his mother who had never visited for 23 years the tomb of her husband.
Not only that. The king also desired to show off the magnificent appearance of Hwaseong and his pride in the city before the presence of his opponents who drove his father to death in the Joseon Dynasty. It was why he personally commanded his royal guards to be drilled in a very stately manner for two times on the evening and at night of the 4th day of his visit, to which training all the residents within the castle were invited and positively responded.
Besides, on his way to the castle, the king closely looked at the living of the people and paid attention to their difficulties and troubles or solved their problems.

King Jeongjo was a reformed monarch, who paid a visit to outside the palace 66 times and dispatched his secret commissioners about 60 times in order to catch up with the changing trends of the age and take care of the life of the people.
Now, the temporary palace of Hwaseong holds a performance of 24 skills of martial arts at 11 and 15 hours everyday except Mondays. King Jeongjo ordered warriors Dong-su Baek and Je-ga Park and others to complete the compilation of a military science textbook, which his father longed to publish. 24 war techniques reported in the book are still handed down to us and demonstrated before us.