This building, completed in 1922, originally housed the Gunsan branch of the Bank of Chosen — the institution that functioned as the central bank of colonial Korea and managed the financing that made it possible to ship rice grown on the Honam plain out to Japan. When Gunsan is described as "the gateway of rice extraction," this bank building was the place where the money driving that gateway actually flowed through.
Today it's been renamed the Gunsan Modern History Museum and opened to the public. The original vault room survives intact, now displaying period currency and financial artifacts. It's easy to walk past this building admiring its handsome colonial-era architecture without registering what it was actually built to do — but knowing its original function sharpens the meaning of what's on display inside. The museum sits just steps from the floating pier described above, so the port facility that moved the grain and the bank that managed the money behind it still stand a few minutes' walk apart.