Historic Villages of Korea: Hahoe and Yangdong
The number of Wikipedia languages with an article is our measure of how widely known a site is. Counts of visitors and wishes will appear once enough people use the app.
Seals, want-to-go and the year you stood here are recorded in the iPhone app.
How it came to be
In south-eastern Korea, the heartland of the Joseon dynasty (1392-1910), two clan villages of the yangban gentry stand 90 km apart. Hahoe and Yangdong were founded in the 14th-15th centuries, backed by wooded hills and facing a river and open fields.
Hahoe has been the village of the Pungsan Ryu clan since the 15th century, and its name refers to the river that bends around it. Yangdong was founded by Son So (1433-1484) of the Wolseong Son clan, whose daughter married into the Yeogang Yi family, and it became a village of both clans. Head-family houses, pavilions, study halls and Confucian academies stand beside the mud-walled, thatched houses where commoners once lived.
The villages reached their present size in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Hahoe keeps its Byeolsin-gut mask drama for the village spirits, and the Yongmogak shrine, which holds Yu Seong-ryong's books, keeps the Jingbirok. The two villages were inscribed in 2010.
Data: Wikidata (CC0). Photos: Wikimedia Commons, under each photo’s license. Prototype; may contain errors. We measure usage anonymously to improve the app (PostHog, EU).