Udang House, Boeun

The house stands in a pine forest on a broad delta where streams converge. The natural scenery and the house combine to create a very beautiful setting, and it is said that outstanding carpenters were carefully chosen to build it. Outside the inner wall enclosing the sarangchae, anchae and sadangchae (ancestral shrine), a thick, high outer wall once ran broadly around the whole site, but much of it collapsed when damaged in the great flood of 1980. The sarangchae, laid out in an H-shaped plan and facing south, has a structure rarely seen in an ordinary sarangchae. Toenmaru verandas were installed on both the front and back, making use of even more space. Around the broad daecheong hall at the centre, the great sarang room and other spaces, including a small side room, a medicine room and further wooden-floored rooms, were arranged on either side. The anchae, also H-shaped in plan, stands to the left of the sarangchae, centred on its own daecheong hall, from which the front and back toenmaru verandas give access to every room. The kitchen occupies a very large space, with a loft above it. Its structure is broadly similar to that of the sarangchae, but whereas the sarangchae used round columns throughout, the anchae has round columns only at the front and square columns elsewhere. The U-shaped haengnangchae, which wraps broadly around the anchae to form the inner courtyard, comprises the main gate, a gatehouse room, an ondol-heated room and a storeroom. The sadangchae stands north of the haengnangchae, aligned on the same axis as the sarangchae. The corridor building linking the jesuchae (ritual-food preparation building), which has a kitchen on its south side, to the shrine is a feature that appeared only in the twentieth century, added so that rites could be performed without difficulty even in wind and rain. Built between 1919 and 1921, at a time when the tide of modernisation had prompted experiments with improved hanok structures, this house was an ambitious, forward-looking attempt to perfect a new form of hanok, and it therefore holds important scholarly value. This heritage site is generally open to visitors, but access may be restricted at times due to the personal circumstances of the owner or others.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Boeun, Chungbuk

Designation

National Folklore Heritage · 국가민속문화유산