Guryongpo Japanese House Street

In the lanes behind Guryongpo Port in Pohang, two-storey wooden houses built by Japanese fishing settlers in the 1920s and 1930s still stand in a row. With their lattice windows, white plaster walls and tiled roofs, they are a lived-in record of the Japanese colonial period on Korea's east coast fisheries. In the middle of the street, the former house of Hashimoto Zenkichi has been turned into the Guryongpo Modern History Museum, so you can step inside one of the houses.

History: Guryongpo as a Japanese fishing town

After Joseon and Japan signed trade regulations in 1883, Japanese fishermen began crossing to the east coast. When Japan built breakwaters and developed Guryongpo into a major port in the 1920s, many of them settled here for good. They first lived on the uninhabited hillside to the north-east, then built today's street on land reclaimed from the beach after the harbour works. As catches grew, restaurants, shops and even a school followed, while Korean fishermen in the same period were losing their fishing rights.

The Japanese residents left with liberation in 1945, and Koreans lived in, altered or demolished the houses they left behind. Pohang City bought and restored the Hashimoto house in 2010, and in December 2013 it opened a 457 m stretch of Guryongpo-ri as a modern history and culture street. Sources differ on how many Japanese-style buildings survive: 47 or around 80.

What to see

• Guryongpo Modern History Museum: a two-storey wooden house built in the 1920s by Hashimoto Zenkichi, a man from Kagawa Prefecture who made his fortune transporting fresh fish. The building materials are said to have been shipped from Japan. Downstairs, a tatami room with a Buddhist house altar (butsudan) and a kotatsu table has been recreated, along with the old kitchen and toilet. Upstairs, the daughter's room and guest room show off the family's wealth with a tokonoma alcove, ranma transom carvings and patterned lattices.
• The lanes: look for the former restaurant and tea-house buildings, a post box modelled on a 1900s design and the site of the old Japanese primary school. Some houses now serve as cafés or souvenir shops.
• Guryongpo Park stairs: the stone staircase from the middle of the street up to the hilltop park was built in 1944 so Japanese residents could reach their shrine. A pillar at the bottom is inscribed "Yongwangdang Entrance" (龍王堂入口).

The back of the pillars

The stone pillars lining the stairs were originally carved with the names of prominent Japanese residents. After liberation, locals erased the names and turned the pillars round, so the blank sides now face the steps. The hilltop shrine was torn down and replaced by a memorial tower and hall for Pohang's war dead. A Japanese stele honouring the breakwater construction was covered in cement, which has led some locals to argue that painful history should be kept visible and used for education rather than erased.

Tripto tips

• Street and park: open at all times, all year, and free. There is a free car park and public toilets.
• Modern History Museum: 10:00–17:30 (last entry 17:00), closed on Mondays. Admission is free.
• Time needed: 1–1.5 hours covers the street, the museum and the park stairs. The park at the top looks right over Guryongpo Port.
• Filming location: the dramas Eyes of Dawn (1991) and When the Camellia Blooms (2019) were shot here, and many visitors walk the lanes looking for familiar scenes.
• Nearby: combine it with Guryongpo Beach, about 700 m away, and Homigot, the sunrise cape about 9 km away, for a half-day on Pohang's eastern coast.