Mungok Seowon

About this place

Mungok Seowon is an academy that enshrined Yi Gyeon-gan, pen name Sanhwa, a loyal subject of the Goryeo period, as its principal figure, together with Yi Dae and Yi Gun-sang. It was built in 1750 (26th year of King Yeongjo) as Mungoksa at the petition of the Confucian community, and was demolished in 1868 (5th year of King Gojong) under the edict abolishing private academies. It later continued as Mungok Seodang until descendants restored it as Mungok Seowon in 1983. It takes a square (口-shaped) layout formed by the main hall, the eastern dormitory Geundokjae, the western dormitory Jonseongjae, and the gate quarters. The main hall is a hip-and-gable-roofed building measuring four bays across the front and two bays deep. It is a central-hall-with-side-rooms type, with a two-bay central wooden-floored hall flanked on either side by a one-and-a-half-bay ondol (heated) room. In a separate enclosure to the left rear of the main hall stands the shrine Hyeondeoksa, a multi-bracket gabled-roof structure measuring three bays across the front and two bays deep. In the rear-left yard of Mungok Seowon stands the spirit-way stele of Sanhwa Yi Gyeon-gan. Yi Gyeon-gan is known to have excelled in letters—so skilled at composing cuckoo poems when he went as an envoy to the Yuan dynasty that he was called Master Sanhwa—and to have followed the Confucian way, cultivating learning and possessing an upright character.