Yeok East and West Temple

This is the first seowon (Confucian academy) built in the Andong region, including Yean, established in 1570, the third year of King Seonjo, at the initiative of Toegye Yi Hwang, with the cooperation of local literati and magistrates, to commemorate the scholarship and virtuous conduct of the late-Goryeo scholar U Tak (1263–1342). It received a royally bestowed name plaque in 1684, the tenth year of King Sukjong, but was later pulled down during the Daewongun's abolition of seowon academies. It was relocated and restored at its present site in 1969, and in 1991 was donated to Andong National University, which had by then moved to this location. The academy stands behind the university library, backed by a low hill and facing south, with the ritual-and-lecture precinct and the caretaker's quarters forming separate compounds arranged side by side. In the lecture precinct the main hall stands at the centre, with a small shrine, the ritual space, set behind it to the right; the caretaker's quarters lie to the left of the main hall. The shrine is a six-bay building, three bays across the front and two bays deep, with a wooden plank floor inside; the three front bays are each fitted with a pair of curved-panel lattice doors. The bracketing is of the double wing-bracket (iikgong) type, with flower-shaped supports set between the columns at the front, while the rear uses mul-ikgong brackets with block-shaped soro ornaments between the columns. The upper frame is a three-purlin structure, with a short king-post set on the main beam to support the ridge purlin. The main hall has five bays across the front and two bays in depth, with a three-bay wooden-floored hall at the centre and one heated room on each side; the front has a half-bay porch, and a built-in closet is set into the rear wall of the room on the right. On a platform finished with cement mortar, only the front columns are round, standing on dressed granite plinths, while the remaining columns are square, set on roughly hewn granite foundation stones. The columns are topped in the simple mindori style, and the roof is a single-eaved hip-and-gable roof. The east and west dormitories are of identical form, each three bays across the front and one and a half bays deep, with a half-bay-wide porch floor along the three front bays; their upper structure is a simplified mindori style topped with a single-eaved gable roof.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Andong, Gyeongbuk

Designation

Provincial Monument · 시도기념물