O Go-dang Historic House, Bonghwa

O Go-dang Historic House, Bonghwa, was the home of Bak Han-jin (1815–1893), known as a celebrated physician of the late Joseon period; it is said to have been built in 1820. The house's name, O Go-dang, was given by his descendants after Bak Han-jin's sobriquet. According to a story handed down in the collected writings of Master O Go, in 1875, the twelfth year of Emperor Gojong, when Bak Han-jin was 61, he cured an illness of Grand Queen Dowager Jo, Queen Sinjeong (1808–1890), the birth mother of King Heonjong. The king so admired his medical skill that he bestowed on him the sobriquet Malli, from the saying "his fame will travel ten thousand li," and sought to reward him with an official post, which Bak repeatedly declined. Impressed by this, Emperor Gojong, praising his integrity and character, bestowed on him the further sobriquet O Go, and his reputation as a celebrated physician spread widely as a result. Afterwards, Grand Queen Dowager Jo also sent him several letters in her own hand asking him to stay near her, but Bak declined and, until his death at 79, continued to practise medicine for the poor of his home village. Although the Grand Queen Dowager's Hangeul letters no longer survive, the story of Bak Han-jin — a scholar who lived in a remote area yet whose reputation reached the royal court, who treated a royal dowager, and who spent his whole life practising medicine for the poor of his village — is a compelling one, and this house, his birthplace, is an important piece of folk architectural material for understanding the life of that time. Bonghwa County in North Gyeongsang Province, where the house stands, borders the mountainous region of Gangwon Province, but in earlier times the two areas formed a single cultural sphere and developed in close relation to one another. This is reflected in the house's floor plan, which the surrounding terrain and natural environment shaped into a form that is "closed outside, open inside" (oepye-naegae): rather than providing separate detached buildings for each function — storehouse, cattle shed and so on — outside the main house, the distinctive feature is that these spaces are compactly integrated within a single main building. In houses whose plan is compactly organised in this way, problems of ventilation and lighting arise, and these are solved by opening a hole — a "magpie hole" — beneath the roof ridge; such houses are known as "magpie-hole houses." Whereas magpie-hole houses are usually thatched, O Go-dang Historic House is distinctive for its tiled roof, making it a rare example through which the changing process of vernacular house construction can be traced. The house's layout comprises three buildings in total — the main house, a detached annex and a gate wing — with the double-row main house at the centre, the gate wing to its right and the detached annex to its left. This realises the Confucian order separating men and women within the "closed outside, open inside" floor plan typical of mountain-region vernacular houses, and is an important architectural feature of the house. However, the architectural history of the detached annex and the gate wing could not be confirmed, and as they have suffered severe damage, they were excluded from this designation.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Bonghwa, Gyeongbuk

Designation

National Folklore Heritage · 국가민속문화유산