Traditional Cities and Houses in Korea
Korea differs from China and Japan in the absence of large cities. There are a number of walled towns, the largest being the capital, estimated to contain two hundred thousand…
Location: North Korea, South Korea
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
Cities and Houses
From Korea: The Land People and Customs by George Heber Jones, 1907.
Korea differs from China and Japan in the absence of large cities. There are a number of walled towns, the largest being the capital, estimated to contain two hundred thousand people, Pyeng Yang, in the north, and Songdo, the ancient capital, and now the center of the ginseng industry, contain with their environs, possibly fifty thousand people each.
Chemulpo, Suwon, Kongju, and Haiju are very much smaller. These seven cities will account for between three hundred thousand and four hundred thousand people out of a population of twelve millions. It will thus be seen that the population is scattered over the Peninsula in innumerable towns, villages, and hamlets, nestling on the hillsides amidst scenes of great natural beauty.
The architecture of Korea is very striking in some of its features. All houses are of but one story, so that looking from an elevation down upon a city like Seoul, it has appearance of being evenly paved with tile, variegated with straw thatch. A few structures used for pleasure or mercantile purposes are of two stories. The feature of one story houses is due to the custom of secluding the women, for it is a serious offense for any one to be found looking down into his neighbor's backyard.
Native architecture culminates in the roof of the house, which is of a most graceful and attractive design where it is worked out in detail. Being of tile, and exceedingly heavy, it is supported by lordly beams and strong pillars, which showing on the inside give the reception halls of the nobility an imposing aspect. The eaves are very deep and thrown into graceful curves, being depressed at the center and caught up and quite extended at the corners. In looking at a roof of this kind from a distance, it seems to float in the air.
The ordinary house is built about one or more sides of a quadrangle, that part farthest from the street being reserved for the female members of the family. The rooms are small, the standard of measurement being the Kan, eight feet square. The floors of the rooms are made of thin flagstones, resting on flues, which extend under the entire surface of the room, starting at the fireplace in the kitchen, and ending at the chimney at the farther end of the building. On top of these flagstones a kind of mud is plastered, and the whole covered with thick, oiled paper of a superior quality, made fast with paste. This gives the house a hot floor, and no one suffers from cold feet. Sometimes it is too hot, especially for foreigners. The place of honor in a room is over the fireplace, and foreigners in traveling about the country have been scorched, burned, fried, and roasted in turns by the honest efforts of their Korean friends to be hospitable.
The chimneys are usually built of tile or stone, and sometimes located a few feet distant from the house. In some sections the chimney is a series of black earthen jars, with the bottoms knocked out, or a hollowed trunk of a tree, or even a roll of matting, and in some cases it consists of a hole in the ground.
Korean life is very simple, and requires few accessories for its comfort. In the houses of the common people you will not find any chairs, beds, stoves, pictures, desks, carpets, curtains, table linen, or forks. On the floor there will be matting or a rug, and a small server on legs does duty for a table, there being one for each individual. The common table where the family sits down as a group to the meal is an institution of Christian civilization and not native to Korea.
The main furniture of the room will consist of two or more boxes or chests, made of choice wood and ornamented with artistic brass or iron castings. In these will be kept clothing, bedding, rice, money, while about the room may be discovered the simple impedimenta of Korean family life.
The people sit and sleep on the floor, which in summer time is like sitting and sleeping on top of the kitchen stove. Shoes are always removed at the door, as the rooms are entered in stocking feet. Etiquette requires a visitor to take off his shoes and keep on his hat. The gentry have comparatively commodious and comfortable establishments at the capital, with country residences in the provinces. Some of them have adopted many of the features of modern Western living, such as furniture and food, and in several cases have built foreign style houses at Seoul. The mass of the people, however, live in farm houses throughout the valleys and on the hillslopes of the Peninsula. In these rural districts the house will include, besides the living room, store rooms and a place for the farm animals. A Korean house has no animal pets, the dog and the pig being banished to a space beneath the veranda, and a Korean would as soon admit one to his house as the other.
Small and inconvenient as these houses are, within their walls are enacted all the comedies and tragedies of life; here the Korean meets life's experiences and changes, passes through its joys and griefs, and endures its good or ill fortunes. The chapters on birth, marriage, and death are written with all their wealth of meaning as fully as in the more spacious mansions of Christian lands. To the European, however, a Korean house represents the maximum of inconvenience, with a minimum of comfort. As a rule, the towns do not create a favorable impression on the traveler. Disorder and confusion prevail. Dirt and dogs abound. Sanitary arrangements are neither healthful nor modest, and loathsome diseases are met everywhere.
Jones, George Heber. Korea; The Land, People, and Customs. Jennings and Graham, 1907.
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