Yeongcheon Jacheon Church

Jacheon Church was founded in April 1903 by Gwon Hyeok-jung. The present church building is said to have been erected in October of that year, although no contemporary records or materials survive to confirm this. The building is a single-storey wooden hanok (traditional Korean-style) church with a hipped (ujingak) roof. Its plan is rectangular, two bays across the front and four bays deep on the side. Inside, the ceiling is a yeondeung ceiling, in which the roof frame is left exposed, and the frame itself is an eclectic truss structure, though its workmanship is somewhat crude. Each transverse bay has two roof trusses, with two columns supporting a tie beam (pyeongbo); the timber members are roughly dressed and the joinery does not strictly follow formal convention, yet the whole gives an impression of natural structural beauty. Besides the rough timber-dressing and joinery, the distinctive features of the building's internal layout are that the space is divided in two by an internal row of columns, with mortise holes between them marking where a partition once separated the men's and women's seating, and that at the pulpit end the central row of columns is stopped short to widen the space, with columns set up on either side to block the congregation's sightline toward the pulpit while also separating the pulpit area from the seating area. The building reflects well the historical and architectural circumstances of the early period of Protestant mission work in Korea and the process by which church architecture took on an indigenous form.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Yeongcheon, Gyeongbuk

Designation

Cultural Heritage Material · 문화유산자료