Hampyeong Yi Jae-hyeok House

The Yi Jae-hyeok House is a sarangchae (men's quarters) built with great care, and its exterior materials and form give it the character of modern residential architecture. The anchae (the main quarters, traditionally used by the women of the household) has since been lost, and only the sarangchae and the mungan-chae (gate quarters), together with the outer garden, remain. According to the sangnyangmun (a ridge-beam inscription recording the building date), the sarangchae was confirmed to have been built in 1917. Although the use of glass windows, a modern material, as an exterior finish is a shortcoming, the house has scholarly value as an example of the transitional stage in which the traditional hanok evolved towards modernisation, and the construction of an L-shaped ("ㄱ"-shaped) sarangchae is a very rare example in this region. It is also significant as a place associated with the seclusion, around 1898, of Kim Ku (pen name Baekbeom). The house is said to have been built in the early twentieth century by Yi Dong-beom (1869–1940) of the Hampyeong Yi clan. His son, Yi Jae-hyeok (1893–1992), lived in the house for the following generation, during which time part of it was demolished, leaving only the sarangchae and the mungan-chae standing today. The anchae, which stood behind the sarangchae, is said to have originally been a seven-kan (bay) double-row house and to have been demolished around 1946, while the hexagonal pavilion (yungmojeong) that had been built to the east of the sarangchae is said to have been demolished around 1984. Judging from its association with Kim Ku's seclusion, the anchae appears to have been built in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The sarangchae now standing bears an inscription on its janghyeo (the horizontal beam below the purlin) recording the date of its ridge-raising: "丁巳二月二十五日開基二十八日安礎同日立柱" ("in the jeongsa year, on the 25th day of the 2nd month, the foundation was laid; on the 28th day, the cornerstone was placed; and on the same day, the pillars were erected"), confirming that it was built in 1917. The mungan-chae similarly bears an inscription reading "歲在己巳四月二十三日開基安礎同月二十五日戊寅未時立柱上樑子坐" ("in the gisa year, on the 23rd day of the 4th month, the foundation was laid and the cornerstone placed; on the 25th day of the same month, at the hour of mi on a musin day, the pillars were erected and the ridge-beam raised, facing the ja direction"), showing that it was built in 1929. The house today consists only of the mungan-chae and the sarangchae. The mungan-chae faces south and stands to the right of the alley at the entrance to the village; passing through it, one finds a garden courtyard planted with various trees and flowers, beyond which stands the L-shaped sarangchae. A particularly notable feature of the house is that a pond was dug in the broad plot to the right of the sarangchae, with a pavilion built in the centre of it; regrettably, the building itself is now gone, and only its hexagonal platform, built by coursing natural stone, remains, having been relocated. The sarangchae is an L-shaped building. In plan, it is organised around a two-kan daecheong (wooden-floored hall), including a recessed bay, with the kitchen placed to its left; at the angled section, two rooms are arranged with a one-kan loft set towards the front on the right. A toenmaru (narrow wooden veranda) was installed along the front-projecting bay of the horizontal wing, and narrow side verandas (jjokmaru) were fitted to the rear of the daecheong and kitchen and to the front of the angled section. Structurally, the building stands on a platform built by coursing long, dressed granite blocks, on which dressed square foundation stones were set; square wooden posts measuring 19.5 cm on each side were erected on these, and the frame is a two-high-column, five-purlin (ryangga) structure, except for the central part of the daecheong, which is a one-high-column, five-purlin structure. The dori (horizontal roof beams) are all square-section napdori supported by janghyeo, and above the ridge beam at the centre of the daecheong a round king-post (daegong) was placed, while above the main beam in the room sections a trapezoidal king-post was placed to support the ridge purlin. For windows and doors, four sliding glass doors were fitted to the front of the daecheong, while each room was fitted with sliding doors with an a-shaped (亞字) lattice pattern and, as outer shutters, paired hinged doors with a vertical-and-horizontal lattice pattern; the roof is a hip-and-gable roof finished with Korean roof tiles, and the eaves are double eaves. The mungan-chae is a hip-and-gable building three kan wide and one kan deep. A pair of hinged plank doors was fitted in the central bay and used as the entrance to the house, the bay to the left was furnished as a room, and the bay to the right was used as a storeroom. Structurally, it has no raised platform; square posts were erected on dressed square foundation stones, forming a three-purlin mindori-style frame. In this building, a combination of jeongja-sal (grid lattice) and bit-sal (diagonal lattice) patterns makes the window in the rear wall of the room particularly notable. The hexagonal pavilion where Kim Ku had hidden was absorbed into the road when present-day National Route 23 (then a second-class road) was built between 1925 and 1926. In 1924, a year before the road was built, Yi Dong-beom dismantled and sold the pavilion that was to be absorbed into the road; he then moved the stones from the pavilion's pond to a site beside the sarangchae, built a new pond there, and erected within it a tile-roofed pavilion with a hexagonal body identical in size to the original, naming it "Yeonjeong." Today, however, only the hexagonal platform remains.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Hampyeong, Jeonnam & Gwangju

Designation

Cultural Heritage Material · 문화유산자료