Jinnamgwan Hall

On a hill in Yeosu's old town, Jinnamgwan is Korea's largest single-storey wooden government building, a hall held up by a forest of pillars. It stands on the site of the Jeolla Left Naval Command, Admiral Yi Sun-sin's headquarters during the Imjin War, and was designated a National Treasure in 2001. It reopened in 2025 after a dismantling restoration that took about ten years, so you can now see the renewed pillars and roof tiles up close.

A guesthouse on a naval headquarters

The hill became a base of the Joseon navy when the Jeolla Left Naval Command was set up here in 1479. Yi Sun-sin took command in 1591 and prepared for the Japanese invasions from a pavilion called Jinhaeru. That pavilion burned during the second invasion, and in 1599 naval commander Yi Si-eon built a 75-bay guesthouse on the site and named it Jinnamgwan (鎭南館), roughly "hall that holds down the south".

A gaeksa like this housed a tablet representing the king, and officials paid their respects to it on the first and fifteenth day of every month. Jinnamgwan burned in 1716 and was rebuilt in 1718 by commander Yi Je-myeon; that is the building you see today.

A building best described in numbers

• Size: 15 bays wide and 5 bays deep under a single hipped-and-gabled roof, with a floor area of about 793 m². No other surviving local government building in Korea is larger.
• Pillars: thick columns stand in rows like trees, carrying a vast open floor. The tall inner columns were shifted back to make the interior more spacious.
• Details: look up at the dragon-head brackets above the central bay, the carved blocks between the pillars and the painted dancheong under the eaves.

Reopened after ten years

During Japanese rule in the 1910s the hall was used as a school, and two of its pillars were cut away. Sea air and termites added to the damage, and in December 2015 the building was taken apart for the first time for a full restoration. The work cost about KRW 19.5 billion: the pillars went from 68 back to the original 70, and the roof was relaid with 54,000 traditionally fired tiles. The original name board was too damaged to rehang, so a carved replica now hangs in its place while the original is conserved.

Tripto tips

• Visiting: open daily 09:00–18:00, admission free (as of October 2026).
• Guides: Korean commentary is available; guided tours in English, Japanese or Chinese must be booked in advance.
• Time needed: 30–40 minutes for the hall alone, about 90 minutes if you add Yi Sun-sin Square and Gosodae at the foot of the hill.
• Getting there: it is about 300 m uphill from Yi Sun-sin Square and about 2 km from Yeosu-EXPO Station (KTX). The car park is free for the first hour.
• Photos: the hall is so long that you need to shoot diagonally from a corner of the courtyard to fit it in one frame. From the hilltop you also look out over Yeosu's harbour towards Dolsan Bridge.
• Autumn evenings: in 2026 a free media-art event runs from 9 October to 8 November (19:30–21:30) around Jinnamgwan, Gosodae and Yi Sun-sin Square.