Korean History and Culture: Structure of a Traditional Korean House (ํ์ฅ ๊ตฌ์กฐ)
Todayโs traditional Korean houses (ํ์ฅ: ํ โ้โ Korea, ์ฅ 'ๅฑโ house) are not exactly representative of the old Hanoks you could find during the Joseon dynasty. It is hard today to find a genuine, traditional Hanok in Korea, in part due to the rapid changes bought to the country by the 90s modernization movement.
The term โHanokโ ํ์ฅ is actually a broad term that can refer to all kinds of ancient Korean houses (์ด๊ฐ์ง, ๋์์ง or ๊ธฐ์์ง, etc. are all Hanoks), but the most famous ones are the types that can be found in the Bukchon Hanok Village (๋ถ์ดํ์ฅ๋ง์) in Seoul.
Despite what most people think, all Hanoks do not look like the ones in the picture above. The famous Hanoks with the grey roof tiles were the ones reserved to aristocratic families, or Yangban (์๋ฐ).
Commoners, or pyeongmin (ํ๋ฏผ) lived in small cottages with straw-thatched roofs, also called choga (์ด๊ฐ์ง), pictured above. They were usually small and consisted of a single building where everyone lived.
*Picture of a ๋ง๋ฃจ: always open on the outside, it was placed at the center of the traditional house. (daecheongmaru ๋์ฒญ๋ง๋ฃจ: name given to the main ๋ง๋ฃจ)
According to Confucian principles, it was separated into two living quarters by a maru ๋ง๋ฃจ*: the anbang ์๋ฐฉ and the sarangbang ์ฌ๋๋ฐฉ. The ์๋ฐฉ was the living quarters of the men of the house, while the ์ฌ๋๋ฐฉ was the living quarters of the women. The ์ฌ๋๋ฐฉ was generally further back, close to the kitchen and far from the main entrance (๋๋ฌธ), because it was men, as the householders, who were supposed to welcome guests.
*Yellow floor in a room using ์จ๋
Each house was equipped with ondol ์จ๋ or gudeul ๊ตฌ๋ค, a heating system hidden under the floor (which is the reason why ancient Korean houses were elevated on wooden piles). Some modern Korean houses have kept this system today, and you can easily recognize those who do thanks to their typical yellow floors* (which is actually oiled paper).
*๋๋ง๋ฃจ: ๋ง๋ฃจ elevated on wooden piles used during the summer
In the summer, when it was too hot to use ์จ๋, peope gathered on a ๋ง๋ฃจ elevated on wooden piles, called numaru ๋๋ง๋ฃจ*: the wind rushing under the floor acted as the opposite of ์จ๋ and helped people stay cool during the hot summer.
Buildings of an aristocratic house
In aristocratic houses, floors were never added โ instead, different buildings were built to welcome different rooms of the house. This way, the ์๋ฐฉ and the ์ฌ๋๋ฐฉ had buildings of their own: they were then called anchae ์์ฑ and sarangchae ์ฌ๋์ฑ, and each had their own ๋์ฒญ๋ง๋ฃจ.
Some aristocratic houses were so big they looked like small cities inside of a city. Here are some of the buildings โ aside from the ์์ฑ and ์ฌ๋์ฑ โ that you could find:
โ ๋ง๋น garden (๋ท๋ง๋น backyard, ์๋ง๋น courtyard, ์ฌ๋๋ง๋น garden of the menโs living quarters)
โ the main gate ๋๋ฌธ generally leads directly to the ํ๋์ฑ (pronounced haengnangche), the living quarters of servants, staff or guests. (In this picture, it is separated by an inner gate ์ค๋ฌธ.)
โ ๊ณณ๊ฐ์ฑ place to store grains (at a time where money wasnโt used in Korea, grains were a symbol of wealth and was the preferred currency). Often close to the ์์ฑ because women were supposed to take care of it. Next to the ๊ณณ๊ฐ์ฑ is the ๋ฐฉ์๊ฐ (the mill).
โ ์ฌ๋น (also called ๊ฐ๋ฌ): ancestral shrine, the place where people go to do the ancestral rites (์ฐจ๋ก). Inside, 4 ancestral tablets (์ํจ) were dedicated to the last four late males of the family (father, grandfather, great-grandfater, great-great-grandfather). The ์ฌ๋น was supposed to be elevated compared to the rest of the house and occupied a very important part (the position of the rest of the house depends on the position of the ์ฌ๋น).
โ ์ธก๊ฐ toilet shed (the toilets were always separated from the rest of the house in an outside cabin).
Other rooms possible not pictured here:
โ ๋ณ๋น other building, could have a lot of different use depending on the needs (study room, living quarters for oneโs parentsโฆ)
โ ๊ฑด๋๋ฐฉ (lit. the opposite room), room reserved for old people or children, often placed in front of the ๋์ฒญ๋ง๋ฃจ of the womenโs quarters ์์ฑ.
*๋ด or ๋ด์ฅ, walls used to separate the house from the outside, as well as the ์์ฑ from the ์ฌ๋์ฑ
All of those buildings were surrounded by a wall called dam ๋ด (or damjang ๋ด์ฅ). It is mostly thanks to those that it is easy to recognize an ancient Hanok from a recent one. On the left picture, we can see an ancient Hanok, with its uneven stones, while on the right, a modern ๋ด with straight and even stones.
๋๋ค๋ณด ridgepole, pillar
์ฉ๋ง๋ฃจ ridge of the roof
์ฒ๋ง eaves (์ถ๋
corner of the eaves)
์ฃผ์ถง ๋ foundation stone, cornerstone
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