A true story of 'hanok'

By Kim Ji-myung

Foreigners often praise traditional Korean houses or “hanok.” Long-time residents here sometimes rue the disappearing of old “things Korean” ― villages, thatched roofs, Korean costumes, good old habits and caring relationship among people. Yes, I agree. We also miss them.

Last week, taking advantage of the empty Lunar New Year’s Day city, I visited a traditional Korean house in a very old neighborhood of the city. Unbelievably, there was enough space to park in the small alley near the house.

The owner, an American professor at Seoul National University, was extremely lucky to buy the small but lovely house at a bargain price, as he confessed, and to have a creative designer and a seasoned master carpenter completely restore the house inside and out.

The cream of the house was some 35 windows. All were works of art, each handcrafted by a glass artist. Each clear pane had a different design embossed in white etching: birds, parts of an old map of Seoul, a lotus leaf, a page from an old book. They were taken from folk paintings and old maps. Delicate care and attention applied for the convenience of the single house master was visible in the layout and in every detail.

Sitting on the warm soy oil-coated paper floor of the master room ― which, in fact, was so small that you could almost touch the four walls sitting at the center ― you naturally start to wonder.

“How is it that foreigners appreciate more the merits of hanok while Koreans mostly choose to live in the flashy but dull concrete apartment complexes?”

A journalist who misunderstood hanok to be cottages, even said recently “In Seoul, traditional hanok (Korean cottages) are virtually extinct. Most of those in Bukchon ― ironically dubbed “Seoul’s traditional district” ― are more recent in vintage than my 1990s apartment.”

We see many ardent foreign hanok-lovers such as the famous champion Mr. Bartholemew, who defended his own and neighboring hanok by winning an administrative lawsuit against the Seoul Metropolitan Government’s redevelopment project.

Then what was the first response of Westerners to the Korean style houses when they landed on this country?

As is well known, the site of the American legation was the first piece of land that the Joseon government sold to a Western country in the history of the peninsula. Britain followed suit and bought the British Embassy compound. In that Jeong-dong area, of course, all the buildings were Korean style hanok before Western style legation buildings were built.

One little-known fact is that Kim Ok-gyun, an enlightened reformist political leader at that time, played the role of an estate agent for William George Aston who purchased the land for Britain’s embassy. They had come to Korea on the same boat from Japan.

Although land prices were getting higher very rapidly with the arrival of many foreigners in the region, the foreigners still thought the prices were very cheap.

From records of that period, we can see that many supposedly ``haunted” houses were purchased by foreigners, as the Westerners in general ``rebuked the rumors and took advantage of the homes’ undesirability among the Koreans and purchased them for relatively low prices.”

“The site… is occupied by six separate buildings at some distance from each other, offering in all accommodation which may be considered equal to twelve European rooms…. All the buildings are of wood, old, and in an indifferent state of repair,” wrote Aston on May 30, 1884.

When a British diplomat suffered from poor health, they thought it was ``because of the buildings” and as a result they decided that the original Korean buildings were too broken down to be kept. Later when another diplomat fell ill too, people also blamed it on the poor condition of the buildings. And in 1889 a final decision was made to erect new buildings on the consular site.

After almost 100 years since then, the American Embassy built its ambassador’s residence, Habib House, in a Korean style. But it is Korean only in style. We see many magnificent hanok that are newly built, employing high-tech air conditioning, heating, plumbing and window systems with fashionable furniture and electronic equipment.

As a girl, I lived in the center of Seoul, where many typical Korean houses stood – near Gyeongbok Palace, the Kyobo Building and Insa-dong. Why did my neighbors leave these traditional houses and move to apartment buildings? Convenience, security and privacy, cost of maintenance and comfortable, spacious environment were the primary reasons I can remember.

As I spent so many days and months in my grandparent’s home down in South Gyeongsang Province when young, my heart leaped up when I read Brother Anthony’s question, ``Do you recall the beautiful harmony that existed between the natural landscape of fields and hills and the soft curves of the roofs of houses, almost all of them thatched with yellow rice-straw?....The houses with their thatched roofs were uniquely Korean.”

But I would like to ask him in return, ``Do you know what it would take to keep a country home and maintain a thatched roof in Korea now?” Rice thatch is hard to get, expensive, and not many people know how to weave thatch ropes and replace the roof. And you cannot afford servants to keep the house in order.

In this regard, I am awed by those wives of the “head families” across the nation who toil in silence to maintain the time-honored traditions of ancestral rituals, regularly receiving guests and family members while maintaining hanok.

The writer is the chairwoman of the Korea Heritage Education Institute (K*Heritage). Her email address is Heritagekorea21@gmail.com.