The Remains of the Old Urban Structure after the Destruction of Cheongju Castle, Korea

Abstract

This study examines the waterway, road and lot systems sustained even after the destruction of Cheongju Castle in the early 20th century in Seongan-dong, Cheongju, a historical city in the inland of South Korea. Seongan-dong, where Cheongju Castle is located, has a ship-like form with the waterway system of Musimcheon Stream that flows backwards. The main current and tributary of Gyoseocheon Stream that flowed in and out of the town castle had served as a drain, and is currently serving as a street network after being covered at the end of the century. As for the road system, there is a rounded-square street network that shows traces of the destroyed town fortress, an orthogonal street network centered on Seongan-gil that connects the south gate to the north gate of the fortress, and dendritic type alleys in the residential district outside the south gate where the tributary of Gyoseocheon Stream had flowed. For the lot system, large-scale lots for government office, guesthouse and barracks at the center of the town castle are now a government office building and park. Large-scale and small-scale lots are subdivided around Seongan-gil and Nammungil, where commercial activities took place, but more than 90% of the division lines of the original lot still remain. As such, 3 important factors that set the direction for the urban landscape of Cheongju include: (1) the restorable waterway system that is still sustained even after 100 years of the modern period, (2) the orderly road system stretched north and south, and (3) the lot system that determines certain sizes and forms of buildings.

The residential characteristics of indigenous families in the eupchies in the late Joseon era: cases from the Yeonsan and Hansan eupchies

“…A descendant of the Eunjin Song family is currently running a large rice mill in the Yeonsan eupchi 13 . In this study, we treated the Yeosan and Eunjin Song families as one family because they both derived from a single family 14 .…”

“…Therefore, the study of the eupchi is very important to the study of Korean traditional towns; however, the study of Korean urban history is proceeding very slowly due to the limitations of historical data. Research on eupchi has yielded progress on topics such as the type and arrangement of chiso facilities (Kim 2004;Baek et al, 2017), the spatial structure of the eupchi with a focus on the chiso (Kim et al, 2000 ;Kim et al, 2003 ;Kim 2017), and feng-shui landscape characteristics (Choi 2003(Choi , 2007(Choi , 2008. However, research on the characterization of eupchies' residential areas and villagers designed to improve our understanding of the nature of the eupchi remains lacking.…”