Hanpungnu Pavilion, Muju

Hanpungnu Pavilion, Muju is a government building of the Joseon period that the literatus Im Je (pen name Baekho), active under King Seonjo, singled out for the highest praise among the "three cold pavilions" of Honam — Hanpungnu of Muju, Gwanghallu of Namwon and Hanbyeokdang of Jeonju, all three named with the character for "cold". Its wooden signboard is said to have been written by the calligrapher Han Seok-bong, and it was a place where countless scholars and artists came to enjoy elegant pursuits through writing and painting, making it a building that reveals the spirit and culture of its age. The exact date of its founding is unknown, but poems written on viewing Hanpungnu by early Joseon-period literati such as Seong Im and Yu Sun in the fifteenth century, together with records such as the Sinjeung dongguk yeoji seungnam (the Newly Augmented Dongguk yeoji seungnam), show that it existed from the early Joseon period, and it is confirmed to have been rebuilt after being completely burned down during the Imjin War (1592). Hanpungnu Pavilion, Muju is a two-storey pavilion with a hipped-and-gabled roof, three bays across the front and two bays deep, showing features such as the two-tier bracket (ikgong) style, and was built faithfully to the conventions of a late-Joseon government pavilion. Its structural stability and aesthetic value are evident in architectural features such as the outer columns set at the lower storey, the proportion and entasis (tapering) of the lower- and upper-storey columns, the shaping of the jar-shaped main beam, and the diagonal support beams set beneath the hip rafters — features that together give the pavilion its own distinctive architectural character. Recent tree-ring dating analysis has also confirmed that major timber members such as the columns and tie-beams date from a repair carried out in the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries, demonstrating that the restoration has remained faithful to the original. Taking together its repair and reconstruction before and after the Imjin War, the fact that it embodies the efforts of the people of Muju to restore, in its original form and on its original site, a building that faced destruction during the Japanese colonial period, and the fact that it is one of the few surviving two-storey government pavilions in Korea clearly showing the characteristics of the seventeenth century, it is judged to hold great historical, architectural and academic value.

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Where it is

Region

Muju, Jeonbuk

Designation

Treasure · 보물