Traditional Houses of Korea
"A Korean domicile is a smoker, built on the same plan as a human tobacco-burner, with a fire at one end and something else at the other. In the terminal…
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
“Inside a Korean House,” from A Modern Pioneer in Korea by William Elliot Griffis, 1912.
A Korean domicile is a smoker, built on the same plan as a human tobacco-burner, with a fire at one end and something else at the other. In the terminal kitchen, the fuel is placed and kindled twice daily, making a combination of utilities. The rice is boiled, the extras are cooked and the heat is utilised all at once. The products of combustion pass into flues laid in the middle space under the flat stone floor of the living rooms which are set between the kitchen and all outdoors.
The exit for smoke, be it hole, vent or chimney, high or low, is at the farther side, often quite low, even beneath the ground level. Twice a day, between sunrise and sunset, a Korean city wears a gray pall of smoke, because of the making up or replenishing of the kitchen fire, which warms also the house. Towards night in winter, one on the street may have hard work to keep either his nose or eyes comfortable in the acrid vapors or to find his way through the pine wood smoke.
In winter the hot floor of the kang is delightfully welcome to the incomer who is cold, wet, or rheumatic; but in summer one feels like a loaf set in an oven. In old Korea a night spent in a close room, between fear of the tigers outside and the heated stones and poisoned air within was usually one of misery. Between May and October one had an Ephraim-like feeling of being half-baked. The "sitz-fleish," as our German friends say, may be well roasted, while the part furthest from the floor may be in polar cold. The usual sensation is that of being in an incubator and wanting to break the shell to get air and life. In time the veteran traveller in Korea learns to sympathise with an egg, but knows not whether to call himself that, or an oyster, "stewed, fried, roasted or in the shell."
Nevertheless "while in Rome, one must do as the Romans do" and so, for economy and the peace and satisfaction of native patients, even modern hospitals in Korea are built with a kang, or heated cement floor, for old people who are afraid to lie on the raised bedsteads for fear they may fall out.
For the building of a house, the ground is first selected and measured. Holes are then dug at intervals of eight feet apart, into which pebbles or broken stone are cast. Then lusty laborers seize the ropes and raise or let fall from pulleys, a heavy iron weight working on the principle of an ore-stamp, or a pile-driver. In the village, the builder may use a ram of heavy timber to pound the rubble into a hard mass. Water worn pebbles or blocks of square-faced rock are then laid in the half-filled holes. On these again the upright beams that support the whole frame are set. The roof timbers are of heavy squared tree trunks, which make admirable rafters, which when black with age resemble Flemish oak.
Smaller beams and slabs are duly framed to form the roof, and on these is laid a heavy mass of earth, into which well baked tiles, overlapping each other, are set. The total effect from the outside, of the better sort of Korean roofs is pleasing, and the native craftsmen excel in geometric combinations and contrasting colours of plain and encaustic tiles, while their thickness and massiveness, by keeping out wind and rain, conduce to one’s sense of coziness and comfort. When too old or in ill repair, the roof can yield misery enough, when the elements are raging.
Our description has been of the better sort of dwelling, as occupied by the official or well-to-do classes. The average house in town and country is in every way humbler and has a thatched roof. In autumn, Cho-sen is, like Holland, the land of red roofs, but the color is in patches only, and arises from the red chili peppers laid out on mats to dry.
To complete the outward shell, stone walls are built from end to end enclosing the platform, which contains the flues. The solid level of earth for the floors and the walls of masonry are raised to the height of from four to eight feet. Usually the masonry is of hard pebbles, and rarely of dressed stone, but well cemented at the seams with white mortar. The general effect, when in good repair, is not unpleasing.
By neglect and dilapidation the structure becomes hideously ugly, unkempt and slatternly looking, much like its greasy inmates, and often requiring props to keep it from collapse. Such a state of affairs is smartly utilised by the burglar, who finds in the loose stones, his opportunity. Instead of descending from the roof, through a scuttle, climbing a verandah or fire escape, forcing doors or lifting windows with a "jimmy," as in western countries, the Korean housebreaker pulls out the stones in the lower masonry, burrows his way in and up through the flues or tunnels silently like a mole into the earthern mass, beneath the sleepers. Then uplifting the flat coverings of the floor and cutting through its paper carpet, he emerges for mischief.
The house walls are woven rather than constructed, and in the process the craftsmen stand as before a loom. They fasten strings of twine, or straw rope from the eaves to the base like a warp. On these again, they tie lumps of hard earth or bits of stone, thus making a wattle, on which they plaster a woof of mud, until a sufficient thickness of material between the timber supports has been secured. Both outer walls and inner partitions are thus wrought. The windows are wooden frames, covered with translucent paper set high up and in the cities usually swinging outward under the eaves. In these modern days, glass panes are common, even in the villages. In the Soul of 1912, are many fine public buildings, modern dwellings and glass fronted shops, undreamed of in 1885.
The house being now enclosed, doors that swing on hinges are added, always with a little hole in the corner for the house dog. The next and most important function is to provide the floor, which is to be eaten, slept and lived upon. Flat slabs, usually of limestone two or three inches thick, are laid over the bed of earth and across the three flues running the length of the house.
Over this surface, the hard, thick, tough Korean paper is pasted. With daily use of moving feet and frequent scrubbing and wiping, this paper carpet takes on in time a mahogany hue and the polish of a well-used saddle, or even becomes as a shining mirror. The mud walls are also limed, white-washed or covered with paper, usually white.
Shelves, railings for clothes, hat covers, cases for books, personal or household necessities, with, it may be, a brass bound and mother-of-pearl inlaid cabinet, or chest of drawers, complete the equipment of an average room in the better class. The pillow box, the latter often finely carved, decorated, painted or embroidered at the ends and made hollow to receive toilet articles, is in use in the cities. In the country a log of wood, or some other material, as hard as Jacob’s pillow, serves. The beds, in the better class of houses, are put away in cubby holes and out of sight during the day, for in Korea, one hardly "goes to" bed. Rather the bed comes to the sleeper. To "take up one’s bed and walk" is a task easily accomplished. To open a roof and let down a sick man on a bed would not be difficult. Often silk cushions are in use with the wealthy.
Let not our general description of a house above the average mislead. Of the 2,742,263 human dwellings, enumerated in the census taken by the Japanese in 1909, in which live 12,934,282 natives, probably two millions have rooms eight by eight, thatched roofs and only mud walls and floors without being papered. It is mud, mud, oiled paper and thatch everywhere, with smells to correspond. Of Korea s twelve millions, the only bed, for probably three-fourths, is the floor with mats in summer and the warmed kang in winter.
Since Korea is a land so long given over to neglect by its rulers, in which the relation of governor and governed was like that of the spider and the flies, the people being considered as so much prey to be skinned and devoured, rather than to be taught, healed and helped, the tile-roofed, well-furnished, or spacious house, with tree-planted yard or flower-garden, is, as the census shows, the exception.
The rule and average is a one-roomed hut, with three articulations of kitchen, bedroom and smoke-vent. The houses are more or less filthy, with a roof of thatch bound down with rope to hold it in the wind, the surroundings being usually of the most uninviting, unhygienic and unsanitary character. Besides a thousand other testimonies, there is Mr. Robert Moose’s admirable little book on Village Life in Korea. Christianity makes a mighty inward and a visible outward change in a Korean villager’s house. Faith even makes flowers grow.
In summer, to hide the nakedness of mud walls and utilise space and sunshine for the growth of melons, or other succulents, vines are planted and run up over the front and roof, which in autumn blazes with the bright scarlet red peppers laid out to dry.
The house of a noble or wealthy man, with its numerous and spacious apartments, attractive wood and lattice work, silken robes and mattresses, clean papered walls, calligraphic scrolls, screens, brass candle-sticks, many signs of a lover of art and books, and with attractive flower gardens and grand old trees, is indeed an enjoyable sight. Out of these houses stride forth men of dignity and manly grace, and women whose toilets compel admiration because of the evidences of the neatness and taste of ladyhood, which is recognised anywhere in the world.
Alas how rare is a house that contains a true home, and in the whole realm how relatively few dwellings that are clean and comfortable! The first reports of explorers, like Lieutenant Foulke in 1882, tell of the revolting absence of private conveniences. Yet out of most unpromising and unsavory surroundings may emerge men in immaculate white or in gaudy silk garments pink for the engaged lad, blue for the official and rainbow tints for the little boy, especially at New Year’s time, and ladies in winter dress of ermine-edged coats, or summer garb of tasteful colours.
Griffis, William Elliot. A Modern Pioneer in Korea. Fleming H. Revell. 1912.
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