Jeong Yeong-guk House in Malli-dong

This is an upper-class urban hanok built in 1936 in Malli-dong (called Bongnae-jeong 4-jeongmok during the Japanese colonial period), one of the residential districts newly developed as the population of Gyeongseong-bu rapidly increased in the late 1930s. The house was first built by Jeong Yeong-guk, a rising capitalist who founded Heungkuk Life Insurance and ran Dongmyeong Rubber (maker of the Hwalpyo brand of rubber shoes) and Samjeong Mining. According to the old building register, the house as first built had one basement floor (4 pyeong) and one storey above ground (38 pyeong), of timber-frame construction with a tiled roof. Records show that in 1949 a two-storey timber-framed extension totalling 19 pyeong (11 pyeong on the first floor, 8 pyeong on the second), roofed in red clay tile, was added to the west. Built facing south on a platform raised more than 2m high on a sloping hillside site, the house makes efficient use of a plot that is not especially large, arranging as many as four buildings: the main house (anchae), the men's quarters (sarangchae), the servants' quarters (haengnangchae), and a side wing (gyeolchae). A three-kan, single-row servants' quarters faces the front of the house, with stone steps set to one side in front of it. Passing through the main gate one reaches the middle-gate area; to the east the sarangchae, larger by half a kan, is separated from it by a wall, so that the middle-gate wing appears attached to the sarangchae. Beyond the middle gate lies the inner courtyard, behind which the giyeok(ㄱ)-shaped main house stands. Outside the west wall runs a back lane with its own back gate, and a two-storey side wing added just before the Korean War stands between them; this two-storey building was later reduced to a third of its original size during the widening of the back lane, so its appearance has been completely altered. West of the middle-gate wing and the servants' quarters, one level below the inner courtyard, a garden or kitchen garden was laid out, separated by a wall. The gate divides the site into several distinct spaces, and the steps, main gate and middle gate are deliberately not aligned on a single axis, so that movement through the house bends and turns, producing a sense of spatial change that shows the full artistic quality of a traditional hanok. Each building has its own features. The main house (anchae) is a typical five-kan house with front and rear toe (eaves bay): from the east it runs geonneonbang (side room), a two-kan daecheong at the centre, then, turning east, the anbang (main room) and, toward the front, the kitchen. A narrow wooden porch runs in front of the geonneonbang, and a projecting head bay (meoritoe) is also set to its west; its upper part has been altered, but a narrow board floor (jjokmaru) survives below, showing it was once a head room (meoritbang). The kitchen, originally traditional, was converted to a standing-style kitchen in the 1990s, though the fact that it still gives access to the basement suggests its lower structure remains in its original form. The sarangchae is a small, two-kan house with front and rear toe, to which a two-kan, gable-roofed middle-gate wing is attached; a middle-gate room is set to its west, designed to be entered from the inner courtyard. The gate wing is a three-kan house with a triple-purlin frame, with the gate at the centre and a gatekeeper's room to the east; the narrow board floor for access through the gate survives as originally built. The two-storey side wing added to the west of the main house in 1949 also provides evidence of the building methods of its time. Each building shows the structural form typical of a well-built house of its day, with no major structural alteration surviving to the present. Beyond this layout, the house also retains features of its original decoration and landscaping. The doors in particular preserve the artistic sensibility of the period: the a(亞)-pattern sliding doors in front of the daecheong, the wan(卍)-pattern kitchen door, the side door of the anbang, and the diamond lattice set into the various transom windows above the main gate and elsewhere all reflect the design vocabulary of the time. The narrow board floors in front of the gatekeeper's room, the kitchen, and the head bay of the geonneonbang are likewise preserved. In the main house especially, the diamond-lattice transom windows, the structural beauty of its long-beam, five-purlin frame, the panelled doors at the rear toe, the painted sliding paper doors of the anbang, the shelf above the daecheong, the a(亞)-pattern lattice of the geonneonbang's sliding window, and the built-in cupboard set between the main-house kitchen and the sarangchae together show a combination of traditional and early twentieth-century artistic sensibility. The main gate, treated as a single kan rather than bent into two, fitted with a glazed a(亞)-pattern middle gate to block the line of sight, is a method that first appears in the twentieth century and survives here unaltered. Details such as the small corbel blocks (ttakjisoro) on the main gate and middle-gate wing, and their triple-purlin framing, reveal the craftsman's efforts at the time to preserve a traditional aesthetic, and the slender proportions given to the columns also reflect the character of the period. The side door connecting to the sarangchae is likewise simple yet handsome in design. In terms of landscaping, training wisteria to climb above the steps in front of the house is a feature worth recording in the history of twentieth-century Korean gardens; setting a small outer yard in front of the gate wing follows traditional practice unchanged. Several shrubs were planted to the west of the inner courtyard, not perfectly preserved but offering an important view onto the history of Korean gardens; a small front garden set apart, one level below, to the west of the gate wing is also unusual, though much of its original form has been lost. The terraced flower bed (hwagye) behind the main house has likewise lost much of its original atmosphere, but still offers a glimpse of the gardening sensibility of ordinary people in the past. This house allows us to examine the residential life and aesthetic sensibility of a rising capitalist of the Japanese colonial period, and is also significant for folk life history as a house in which five generations of the same family lived in succession. Because it survives today largely unaltered from its original form, it is an important resource not only for studying the traditional architectural aesthetics of the early twentieth century but also for understanding the traditional life history that preceded it. Whereas ordinary urban hanok of the period generally departed from the traditional hanok layout to become digeut(ㄷ)- or mi(ㅁ)-shaped, this house carries on the artistic qualities of the traditional hanok in its spatial layout and structure, while its decorative design and landscaping show a complex combination of the development of the traditional hanok with the introduction of foreign elements, giving it great scholarly value. Valuable for folk life history, architectural history and landscape history alike, this hanok is an important resource for understanding the residential culture not only of the Malli-dong area but of Seoul as a whole in the early twentieth century.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Jung-gu, Seoul

Designation

Provincial Folklore Heritage · 시도민속문화유산