Three families amassed enough wealth during the Japanese colonial period to earn the title "manseokkun" — landowners whose annual grain harvest was measured in the tens of thousands of bushels — and all three built their homes in Hamna Village: the Jo Hae-yeong House, the Yi Bae-won House, and the Kim Byeong-sun House (formerly the Kim An-gyun House). Yi Bae-won's father, Yi Seok-sun, originally lived in nearby Impi before relocating to Hamna, where he started out selling nuruk (fermentation starter for rice wine) from a thatched-roof home and eventually built a fortune in trade alongside his younger brother. The Jo family, by contrast, had deep roots in Hamna going back generations; the family's rise was cemented by an ancestor named Jo Han-gi, who served as magistrate of Sacheon and Jeongeup during the reign of King Gojong.
A saying about these three households has survived to this day: that the villagers of Hamna grew lazy precisely because the three wealthy families were so generous with their hospitality. Unlike the landlord class elsewhere in colonial Korea, often remembered chiefly for exploitation, this village passed down a story that's almost the opposite — one where the rich family's generosity spoiled the community with comfort, a slightly paradoxical but warm-hearted bit of folklore. All three houses still stand together in the same village today, making this a rare place where you can compare, side by side, how the local elite of the colonial era actually lived.