Mapo Choe Sa-yeong House

This old house is believed to be the main women's quarters (anchae) of a residence built in 1906 in Mapo by Choe Sa-yeong, an official of the Korean Empire (1897–1910) widely known as a man of wealth who amassed his fortune through mining, finance and warehousing. Choe Sa-yeong, who built this house, had already been living at Samgae (236 Mapo-dong) before its construction, and remained active as a local notable, or "gentleman" (sinsa), until the late 1920s. During the Korean Empire he rose to the third senior rank (jeong-sampum) and served as a councillor (uigwan) of the Jungchuwon, the body corresponding to Korea's first national assembly. On 26 August 1910, just before the loss of national sovereignty, he was decorated at the sixth class and awarded the Order of the Taegeuk. He was also an active businessman: already during the Korean Empire he had built his fortune through ventures such as gold mining, finance, warehousing and the reclamation of abandoned farmland, and in 1911, early in the Japanese colonial period, he was named as one of only 32 Koreans nationwide known to hold assets worth more than 500,000 won. Historical records of the period also confirm meaningful social activity on his part as a local notable: before the loss of sovereignty he gave financial support to patriotic enlightenment organisations such as the Giho Heunghakhoe and to schools such as Boseong Elementary School, and afterwards he took the lead in helping the families of independence activists in economic hardship and in providing relief to local residents affected by flood damage. Choe Sa-yeong appears to have built this house in 1906 and lived there until 1929. The construction date is confirmed by an inscription on the building's ridge purlin reading "大韓光武十年丙午七月十七日甲時竪柱上樑" — that the columns were raised and the ridge beam set up at the gap-si hour on the seventeenth day of the seventh month of the byeong-o year, the tenth year of Gwangmu of the Korean Empire, i.e. 1906. After Choe Sa-yeong, ownership passed to Choe Seong-ryeol, then in 1941 to Matsushima Masuei, and after liberation it changed hands repeatedly: to Kim Hyeong-jong in 1946, Yi Yun-yeong in 1947, the Korea Trust Bank in 1971, Yi Jong-seung in 1974, Yi Eul-sun in 1980, Korea Products in 1999, and Kim Jeong-ui and Jeong Gi-taek in 2001. According to the Cadastral Register of Gyeongseong and closed-out land registers, the house built by Choe Sa-yeong originally stood on a 407-pyeong (1,345.46 m²) plot at 236 Mapo-dong during the Japanese colonial period, but repeated land subdivisions after 1946 meant that by November 2001, when its designation as heritage was first considered, only this single building remained, on a much smaller plot of 826.8 m² at 236-1 Mapo-dong. It is presumed that several other buildings stood alongside this one when Choe Sa-yeong built the complex, but how many there were or how they were laid out can no longer be clearly established. This building is thought to be the main women's quarters among them: an L-shaped wooden tiled house with single eaves, a hipped-and-gabled roof, and a five-purlin frame. It stands on a two-course dressed stone platform with squared, truncated-pyramid foundation stones supporting square wooden columns that carry the five-purlin frame, and its purlins are round in section. In plan, the house is centred on a wooden-floored main hall two bays wide and two bays deep; to its right is the main bedroom, and the plan turns south of the main bedroom into a kitchen two bays wide and two bays deep, with an attic above it. To the left of the main hall is a guest room one bay wide and two bays deep, and beside it a raised wooden floor one bay wide and two bays deep. As in palace architecture, the tops of the rafters in the main hall's exposed ceiling are sealed with boarding of the same material as the structural timber, to reduce damage from water leakage; verandas run along the front and back of the main hall, each fitted with a railing; and the kitchen's exterior wall combines a plank door with flanking plank walls, a low sill with a lattice window above it, a long hanging-shutter window in a high window above the kitchen, and bracket supports carved with scrolling-vine ornament holding up the kitchen shelving — features found nowhere else that distinguish this house from other ordinary yangban houses of the Seoul region. When the house faced the threat of demolition during a change of ownership in 2001, it was provisionally designated a Seoul Folklore Material on 27 November 2001 for its preservation. On 20 March 2002 the Seoul Cultural Heritage Committee, reviewing an application to alter its condition, approved its relocation, and between 2003 and 2007 it was restored to its present form on its current site by the Korea Furniture Museum. Because the overall layout of the house, including this building, was already uncertain while it stood in Mapo, and because the building itself had already been partly altered and was further altered in the course of its relocation and restoration, it is difficult to designate it a Seoul Folk Cultural Heritage. However, the overall design and craftsmanship of the building are of outstanding quality, and the composition and ornamentation of the kitchen's exterior wall in particular are exceptionally fine, offering a good illustration of how houses of Seoul's highest social class were built at the time. It is therefore designated and preserved as a Seoul Cultural Heritage Material.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Seongbuk-gu, Seoul

Designation

Cultural Heritage Material · 문화유산자료