SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea boasts thousands of years of history, but save for a few signature, heavily restored sites such as medieval palaces, tourists have to dig deep to discover the capital’s architectural heritage.
Within living memory, the bulk of the city’s population lived in hanok, or traditional homes. These single-story, wood-framed, thatch- or tile-roofed cottages lined picturesque lanes, or golmok, granting Olde Seoul a timeless, uniquely Korean quality.
With much of the millennial, wealthy, wired capital now an international “everycity,” that quality is gone.
Some districts were smashed in street fighting during the Korean War in 1950, but many were untouched. The real architectural game-changer was postwar development.
As South Korea swiftly industrialized in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, rural dwellers flooded Seoul for work and vast swaths of old homes were bulldozed to make space for modern infrastructure. Population density required endless blocks of high-rise apartments — convenient and comfortable but aesthetically barren — that now dominate the cityscape.
Democratization in 1987 sparked the second wave of destruction, which continues today. Landowners vocally demanded their right to develop, even in areas noted for concentrations of hanok housing.
The motive was profit. Multistory buildings are more remunerative for landlords.
Seoul has preserved and updated monumental architecture, such as royal palaces and Buddhist temples, but has virtually obliterated the heritage of ordinary citizens. Today, the city’s historic hanok teeter on the brink of extinction.
Into this vortex has stepped American Robert Fouser.
“Unless the real estate development mechanism loses power, it will keep building — which means destroying everything in its way,” Mr. Fouser said. “Seoul is going to end up a generic concrete jungle with no connection to Korean heritage or tradition.”
He does see hope in the rising generation of South Koreans, in a newfound appreciation of the country’s heritage and in nascent changes to long-held investment practices.
Champion of Korean cottages
Mr. Fouser, 61, is an author and academic who divides his time between his Rhode Island home base and Japan and South Korea. His love for traditional Asian architecture was in the family.
“My father was in the U.S. occupation army in Japan,” he said. “He had studied draftsmanship so was sent to Kyoto to do architectural drawings.”
Mr. Fouser’s father introduced Asian elements to his U.S. home and told many tales of the buildings and sights he witnessed in Asia. It rubbed off.
Mr. Fouser spent a year in Japan as a high school exchange student. He then earned degrees at the University of Michigan and Trinity College Dublin before relocating to Asia. He eventually spent 29 years overseas.
He has lived in three different hanok and published five books in Korean. A pending work, covering architectural preservation benchmarks in Europe and the U.S., is set for publication late this year.
He delivers hanok lectures, offers tours and writes columns in leading popular media. He has even led visiting British royalty down little-known golmok.
Mr. Fouser is following a lead set by Englishman David Kilburn, who died in 2019, and American Peter Bartholomew, who died two years later. In a country where celebrity endorsements of issues are not customary, the three expatriates’ passion for hanok won a large and respectful following.
“We also believed in the values of our own traditions, so listening to them was confirmation,” said Hwang Doo-jin, one of South Korea’s leading boutique architects and a friend of Mr. Fouser. “But they were these very educated gentlemen from the West, so that was a different kind of confirmation.”
Mr. Fouser’s predecessors were die-hard restorationists who demanded the utmost historical authenticity.
Both despised city projects to destroy frail old hanok and raise new hanok in their place. That practice changed the face of Bukchon, Seoul’s most famous but now hardly historic hanok quarter.
Neo-hanok properties are the new wave. Seoul City announced in February a policy to create 10 “hanok villages” by offering grants to property owners who raise new hanok or add hanok-style features to existing buildings in sites across the capital.
This approach may reek of kitsch, but Mr. Fouser is flexible on authenticity. He calls himself a “hanok enthusiast” rather than a “hanok activist” like his predecessors, both of whom suffered injuries at the hands of thuggish property developers as they pursued the preservationist cause.
“Rather than follow the orthodoxy of authenticity and integrity, my line is to preserve or enhance as much of the cityscape as possible,” he said. “If an old house cannot be repaired, I am OK building a new hanok.”
It is rarely about one home when entire neighborhoods can be on the development chopping block. Powerful, politically connected construction companies buy out locals and flatten neighborhoods to develop high-rises.
Absent top-down change, Mr. Fouser hopes for a bottom-up solution related to accepted investment practices that encourage property owners to develop and redevelop.
“There is no vehicle in Korea for growing your money except property,” he said. “If you really want to preserve hanok and cityscapes, you have to have vibrant capital markets. Then real estate could be more of a place to live.”
Speculators and markets
South Korea is the world’s 10th largest economy, and the Korean Stock Exchange is the world’s 15th largest by market capitalization, according to 2023 data from The Robust Trader. The KSE is home to megabrands such as Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motor but lags exchanges in smaller economies including Switzerland and Australia.
The result: a postwar history of bricks and mortar building emerged for many as the only viable route to wealth.
“The older generation’s entire investments were real estate. They bought homes, and home prices always went up,” said James Kim, a Seoul-based portfolio manager. “Koreans tend to put a lot more weight on real estate than on equities and other financial instruments in other countries.”
With Seoul property prices shooting through the roof, change is afoot.
“The young generation is staying away from real estate as it needs a lot of capital,” Mr. Kim said. “They are investing in small-cap equities and [cryptocurrencies].”
Mr. Fouser hopes young Koreans, locked out of property markets, will value their hanok heritage differently than their parents and grandparents, who considered them old-fashioned, uncomfortable and unprofitable.
Signs are encouraging. Bukchon is a city-financed, official preservation district, but another Seoul neighborhood getting fresh notice for its hanok stock is not.
In Ikseon Dong, young people have organically preserved hanok. Though many interiors have been gutted and are no longer suitable as homes, the hanok are sustainable, having been converted into chic cafes, bars, restaurants and shops.
Mr. Hwang, whose architectural firm operates a hanok practice, is a fan.
“Architecture changes with time,” he said. “Even old buildings have to find a way to adapt to their new environments.”
“There is a third way between orthodox preservation and tearing down and building new hanok. That is creative adaptation,” Mr. Fouser said. “This is still destruction, and they are not beautifully restored, but it is better than the alternative, which is raising big towers.”
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.
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