Yangdong Folk Village

Yangdong Folk Village sits on the slopes of Seolchangsan in Gangdong-myeon, about 20 km north-east of central Gyeongju. Two clans, the Gyeongju Son and the Yeogang (Yeoju) Yi, have lived side by side here for nearly 600 years, cooperating and competing, and residents still live in its tiled-roof and thatched houses. In 2010 it was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List together with Hahoe in Andong as "Historic Villages of Korea: Hahoe and Yangdong".

History: a village built by sons-in-law

Yangdong grew out of an early Joseon custom of husbands moving into their wife's family home. Son So (1433–1484) married a daughter of the local Ryu family and settled here; later Yi Beon married Son So's daughter and moved in too. Yi Beon's son was Yi Eon-jeok (1491–1553), a pioneer of Joseon Neo-Confucian thought, and Son So's son was Son Jung-don (1463–1529), remembered as an incorruptible official. Yi Eon-jeok was later honoured with a place in the Munmyo, the national shrine to Confucius. The two families grew the village together, and it was designated National Folklore Heritage in 1984.

What to see

• Songcheom Jongtaek (Seobaekdang): the head house of the Gyeongju Son clan, built by Son So in 1459. Both Son Jung-don and his grandson through his sister, Yi Eon-jeok, were born here. The name board "Seobaekdang" means writing the character for "patience" a hundred times, and an old juniper several centuries old stands in the garden behind the men's quarters.
• Hyangdan: built by Yi Eon-jeok while he was governor of Gyeongsang Province. Its unusual plan joins the servants' wing, women's quarters and men's quarters into a single block, and it is the first house that catches your eye from the village entrance. It is a designated Treasure.
• Gwangajeong: Son Jung-don's former house. True to its name, "pavilion for watching the farming", its open raised floor looks out over the fields. Also a Treasure. Hyangdan was designated in 1964 and Gwangajeong in 1966.
• Mucheomdang and the schools: Mucheomdang, a detached hall of the Yi head house, plus the Son clan's school Allakjeong (around 1776) and the Yi clan's Ganghakdang, facing each other across the village.

Good to know

The village sits on ridges that split into four, said to form the shape of the character 勿. Houses are tucked into separate valleys, so you cannot see the whole village from the entrance. The yangban tiled houses stand on higher ground, while the thatched homes of the families who served them cluster lower down, so the layout still shows Joseon social order.

Looking more closely

The village has more than 160 tiled and thatched houses, and 54 of them are over 200 years old. Signboards in front of the old houses tell you who built each one and when.

• Gwangajeong's gate: gates usually join the servants' wing, but here the gate is attached to the men's quarters. The main house and men's quarters form a square around a courtyard, with a shrine at the back.
• Hyangdan's two courtyards: Hyangdan encloses both an inner courtyard and a service courtyard within one building. Following geomantic principles, the main block was built in the shape of the character 月 and the servants' wing added to form 用.
• The small study at Songcheom Jongtaek: a second, smaller study usually faces the main one across the hall; here it was placed in a corner so the two rooms do not face each other.

Stories cling to the village too. Adding one stroke beneath 勿 turns it into 血 ("blood"), so, the story goes, a railway planned through the village in the colonial period was rerouted around it, and the south-facing primary school was turned to face another way. Tonggam Sokpyeon, a National Treasure printed with metal type, is also kept in the village.

What UNESCO valued

Yangdong was inscribed because the living spaces and intellectual heritage of the Joseon yangban survive close to their original form. It is among the oldest clan villages in Korea and a model example of a clan village built against a hillside. Fields for farming, family homes, ancestral shrines, pavilions and study halls all remain within one village, and old documents, artworks, family rites and village events are still kept alive. It is interesting to compare it with Hahoe, which lies on a plain inside a river bend, while Yangdong leans into the hills.

Tripto tips

• Opening hours: April–September 09:00–19:00, October–March 09:00–18:00. Ticket sales end one hour before closing; open all year.
• Admission: adults KRW 4,000, teenagers and soldiers KRW 2,000, children KRW 1,500. Free with ID for visitors aged 65 and over and children aged 6 and under. Parking is free.
• Etiquette: people live here. Do not enter houses without permission, and view houses with closed gates from outside only. Opening hours may change to protect residents' privacy.
• Time needed: allow 1.5–3 hours to walk the hilly lanes to the main houses. Wear comfortable shoes.