Architecture and Urbanism in Modern Korea by Inha Jung (review)

In the opening pages of Inha Jung’s historical volume Architecture and Urbanism in Modern Korea, the reader learns of a curious variation in the evolution of urbanism in Korea. “The roots of the urbanization of Korea can be seen to lie not in the industrialization process per se, as occurred in Western countries, but in Japanese colonial rule” or in the pressure on the Korean people to assemble together stemming from the historical repercussions of Japanese colonial rule. Korea’s urban environment is densely layered, reflecting its turbulent modern history. Jung characterizes the modern history of Korean architecture and urbanism as a “rupture, transformation, and complete uprooting of the traditional lifestyle,” especially due to the “compressed time span of urbanization.”

Modern Korea refers to a period starting from the late nineteenth century at the opening of the country’s ports to foreign forces and continuing up to its modern prominence in Asia. Jung chronicles this highly complex timeline of architecture in Korea that is directly influenced by its extensive historical and contemporary past. He divides the twentieth century into three periods with a focus on urban and housing development: the period from Liberation to the Korean War (1945–53) as the first break, and the period between the late 1980s and early 1990s as the second. Even those unfamiliar with Korea’s modern history can easily follow through the sequences as Jung provides a variety of supportive materials, such as maps, photos, and numbers to augment the unremitting creation and destruction of Korea’s landscape.

Traditional town planning during the Chosŏn period (1392–1910) took place within the town fortresses. During the colonial period, most of these fortresses were destroyed in order to accommodate Japan’s intention to consolidate colonial rule in Korea, a time of “stateless-ness” and intellectual despair as is most poetically articulated by Yi Sang’s existential literature.

Following Korea’s independence and the Korean civil war, rapid economic development and transformation of the urban landscape took place in what is known as the developmental period (1960s–early 1980s). Jung’s comparison and analysis on the evolving urban planning policies in the expansion and development of Seoul and the Kangnam (south of Han River) are thorough. During this time, urban design policy was largely controlled by the political ideology of the military government, “growth first” policy, and the capitalist market mechanism, as Jung quotes Rem Koolhaas’s “Form follows finance.”

The later urban developments in Korea (1980–90) reflect the issues of our current times and have many accommodations to global issues and ecological concerns. The themes focus on adaptive urban changes, shifted from the earlier “growth first” policy. The historical Ch’ ŏnggyech’ ŏn stream was restored, and the new experimental cities of Sejong Admin city and Hyeri Art Valley show approaches much different from those of the earlier period.

Modern urban development during the twentieth century also made a significant impact on residential housing types, which Jung fully discusses in detail in the book: authentic traditional hanok types that represented Chos ŏn’s class system did not survive during this time, while Japanese and Western missionary-style houses were first introduced and new technological and material elements were also popularized. A new modified form of hanok, later termed “urban hanok,” evolved in response to market demand in the urban setting of the time. Urban hanok is based on the traditional commoner’s house type, a U-shaped or quadrangular donut structure with a central courtyard (madang), the primary type of urban housing in large cities from the 1920s to the 1960s, but then is eventually discarded as the dominant housing type later in the 1960s. Instead, furnished with up-to-date equipment and suited to a Korean way of life, apartment houses become the dominant form of middle-class housing during the developmental period. These apartment houses become a source of wealth as an investment and symbol of social status...