Hahoe: A Village Owned by One Family for Six Centuries

At a glance

• 🌳Settled at the end of Goryeo

  The Pungsan Ryu formed the village when Ryu Jong-hye took ground here at the close of the Goryeo dynasty.

• 👥Not the first family here

  The Heo and An families are thought to have lived here before the Ryu; a record notes the Ryu were the most numerous by 1635.

• 🛤️One lane, two sides

  The central inner lane runs from the entrance to Yangjindang and Chunghyodang, and divides the village into a north side and a south side.

• 🌏UNESCO, 2010

  Inscribed with Yangdong as Historic Villages of Korea.

Joseon (조선, the dynasty that ruled Korea from 1392 to 1910) organised society around the patrilineal lineage, and the clan village is that idea turned into a settlement plan. One family line holds the land, the ancestral shrine and the social authority; other households live in relation to it.

Hahoe is a clan village where the Pungsan Ryu took ground and have lived, in Hahoe-ri, Pungcheon-myeon, Andong.

The founding is dated and named. The Pungsan Ryu at Hahoe begin with Ryu Jong-hye, the eighth-generation figure known by the title Jeonseogong, who settled here at the end of the Goryeo dynasty. The village then flourished through Ryu Jung-yeong (1515–1573) and his two sons, Ryu Un-ryong and Ryu Seong-ryong. Goryeo, the dynasty that preceded Joseon, is covered in the Goryeo overview.

Here is the detail that keeps the story honest. The Ryu were not the first people here: the Heo and the An families are thought to have lived at Hahoe before them, and according to the records it was by 1635 that the Ryu were the most numerous.

So the village was not founded as a Ryu village in a single act. It became one over roughly two and a half centuries. That is how most clan villages actually formed, and Hahoe is unusual mainly in how completely the process is still visible on the ground.

The generation that made Hahoe prominent is the one to know.

Ryu Jung-yeong's two sons were Ryu Un-ryong, known by the style name Gyeomam, and Ryu Seong-ryong, known as Seoae.

Ryu Seong-ryong served as chief state councillor during the Imjin War — the Japanese invasions that began in 1592 — and it is because of him that the village's name appears in national history rather than only in local history. The academy that enshrines him, Byeongsan Seowon, is 3 km away, and the two sites are one story split across two places.

That relationship is the single most useful thing to carry between them. Hahoe is where the family lived. Byeongsan is where the family's most consequential member was studied, remembered and honoured after his death.

The village sits inside a bend of the river, which is where its name comes from — hahoe means the river turning back on itself. Everything else follows the slope.

The lanes and house sites were laid out on ground that falls away on all four sides. The central inner lane runs from the village entrance towards Yangjindang and Chunghyodang, with other lanes branching from it in every direction, and the village is divided by that central lane into a north side and a south side.

That is a social map, not just a street plan. The main houses sit on the lane; the branch households sit off it. Walking the central lane first and the side lanes afterwards gives you the hierarchy in the order it was built.

The encyclopedia also names what the village is composed of, and it is worth using as a checklist: living space, ritual space, and space for productive work — with folk-belief facilities in particular well preserved and still transmitted.

That last clause is the one visitors most often walk past. Alongside the Confucian architecture of the head houses, Hahoe kept its village-level folk religion — the shrine sites, the guardian trees, the mask tradition. Two religious systems in one village, one of them official and one of them not.

Two honest cautions.

First, this is a living village, not a preserved set. Houses are occupied, repaired, re-roofed and modernised inside. Some structures are centuries old; others have been rebuilt within living memory. Do not assume that every building you see is untouched Joseon fabric — a village that people have continuously lived in cannot be, and would be a very different kind of place if it were.

Second, the protections are modern. Hahoe was designated National Folk Cultural Heritage on 14 January 1984, covering 1,577 land parcels and 6,495,535 square metres — an area, not a list of buildings, which is the correct way to protect a settlement. It was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2010, together with Yangdong, as Historic Villages of Korea.

The inscription is a pair. Yangdong, in Gyeongju, is the other half and is not currently covered in this guide.

Worth pairing with

• 

  Byeongsan Seowon

  Byeongsan Seowon, 3 km away, which enshrines Ryu Seong-ryong of this village.

• 

  Buyongdae

  Buyongdae, the cliff across the river — the viewpoint every photograph of the village is taken from.

• 

  National Museum of Korea

  The National Museum of Korea, for the wider material culture of the period this village lived through.

• 

  Jeonju Hanok Village

  Jeonju Hanok Village, a very different kind of hanok settlement, for comparison.

Frequently asked questions