Korean Life: House

     Hanok, Korean traditional houses, remaind relatively unchanged from the Three Kingdoms period through the late Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910).

     Ondol, an unique Korean underfloor heating system, was first used in the north. Smoke and heat generated from the low-lying kitchen stoves were channeled through flues built under floor. In the warmer south, ondol was used together with wooden floors.The major materials of traditional houses were clay and wood. Giwa, or black-grooced roof tiles. were made of earth, usually red clay. Today, the Presidential mansion is called Cheong Da Wae, or the Blue House, for the blue tiles used for its roof.

      Hanok were built without using any nails but rather asembled with wooden pags. Upper-class house consisted of a number of separate structures, one for the accommodation of women and children, one for the men of the family and their guests, and another for servants, all enclosed within a wall.A family ancestral shrine was built behind the house. A lotus pond was created in front of outside the wall.

     The form of the house differed from the colder north to the warmer south. Simple houses with a rectangular floor and a kitchen and a room on either side developed into an L-shaped house into the south.Hanok later became U-shaped or square-shaped centered around a courtyard.

     From the late 1960's, Korea's housing pattern began to change rapidly with the construction of Western-style apartment buildings. High-rise apartments have mushroomed all over the country since 1970's but the ondol system has remained popular with heated water pipes taking the place of smoke flues under the floor.

 

Source: Korean Culture and Information Service, Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism