Treating every Bukchon hanok as the intact home of a Joseon aristocrat obscures the neighborhood's actual history. As Seoul's population grew under Japanese colonial rule and housing became scarce, housing companies bought large residential lots and wooded land, divided them into smaller parcels, and developed them. Hanok clusters around Gahoe-dong 11 and 31 and Gye-dong 135 emerged through this process.
Hanok was standardized for sale
Supplying many houses quickly required efficient use of lumber and floor plans. Builders compressed rooms and a courtyard onto narrow parcels and used standardized materials supplied by timber yards. The repeating roofs and walls admired today were created not only by organic growth over centuries, but also by modern real-estate development.
These houses were not built only with “traditional” materials
Builders enclosed the daecheong, or wooden-floored hall, with glass doors, attached corrugated-metal awnings to eaves, and introduced tiles and other new materials. They retained the basic spatial order of hanok while adjusting it to dense urban life. Their value lies less in untouched purity than in their capacity to evolve.
Similar houses still held different lives
Even houses built at the same time and in comparable forms changed according to residents' jobs, household size, and repairs. Today, occupied homes, shops, and restored public hanok remain mixed together. An exterior cannot prove an interior's original condition or reveal the lives of its occupants.