Home of Empress Sunjeonghyo's Family, the Yun Clan

About this place

The Home of Empress Sunjeonghyo's Family (the Yun clan) is a house that vividly preserves the character of an upper-class dwelling of the Joseon period. It was restored after the model of the Okin-dong Yun Clan House located in the Namsangol Hanok Village. Originally standing at 47-133 Okin-dong, Jongno-gu, it was relocated in 1996 when Namsangol Park was created. Said to have been the residence of Empress Yun in the late Joseon period, the house has an overall square (ㅁ-shaped) floor plan, and its main gate faces east. The men's quarters (sarangchae) were built in a pavilion style at the southeastern corner of the lot, in a position overlooking the entire town. The main hall (daecheong) of the women's quarters (anchae) is a six-bay hall, two bays deep and three bays across, facing east. The tops of the columns are all single-bracket (choikgong) style, and the framework, which uses cloud-shaped brackets (ungong) to support the purlins, is distinctive. The roof of the men's quarters is a hip-and-gable roof (paljakjibung) with eave rafters set at the four corners, and the gable faces are finished with brick masonry. The window fittings are of a double-door type with lattice doors and swastika-patterned windows, though they have deteriorated. The decorative technique of the fixed transom windows in the men's quarters, in which the vertical lattice bars are slightly staggered, is worth seeing. On the gable wall of the kitchen, a lattice window was set above the roof of the low servants' quarters to promote natural ventilation; its carving is excellent, the gable-end floral carving uses the typical soesari style, and the column corners and mid-rail edging (such as oesamo, siri, and mossangsa chiseling) are also finely crafted.