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Korea has a village that “rescued” centuries-old houses from demolition and rebuilt them in one place — and you can sleep in them

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Korea has a village that "rescued" centuries-old houses from demolition and rebuilt them in one place — and you can sleep in them

Most travelers know about hanok — traditional Korean houses. Jeonju Hanok Village, Bukchon in Seoul, all of that. But there’s a distinction most people never learn: a “hanok” just means a house built in the traditional style (even one built yesterday counts), while a “gotaek” (古宅) is an old house — one that has actually lived through decades or centuries, often with cultural heritage value. Every gotaek is a hanok, but not every hanok is a gotaek. If a new hanok is a new car, a gotaek is a classic car shaped by time. The grain of 250-year-old wooden pillars and a maru floor worn smooth by generations of hands — a newly built hanok simply can’t imitate that.

Here’s the part I find fascinating: in Wanju — just a 20–30 minute taxi ride from Jeonju Hanok Village — there’s a small mountain village called Oseong Hanok Village where the gotaek weren’t originally there at all. When old houses around the country were about to be torn down for development, people dismantled them beam by beam, moved them, and rebuilt them here.

One of them, Awon, combines a 250-year-old house from Jinju, a 150-year-old house from Jeongeup, and an old village schoolhouse — reassembled above a reservoir, with a modern concrete art gallery at the entrance. You walk through the gallery, climb a set of stairs, and suddenly you’re standing in a centuries-old courtyard looking out over the water and mountains. (BTS shot their 2019 Summer Package here, if that means anything to you.) Another, Soyang Gotaek, was built from three houses rescued from demolition in 2010 and restored by cultural-heritage craftsmen — it now houses an indie bookstore and a cafe, and hosts jazz concerts in the courtyard.

You can actually stay overnight in both. The rooms have warm ondol floor heating, and once the day-trippers leave, the whole village turns wonderfully peaceful — just stars over the courtyard and the sound of the reservoir, then morning mist over the water when you wake up. Sleeping there feels like taking part in keeping a centuries-old house alive.

And the best part for anyone planning a Jeonju trip: it’s surprisingly close — about 20–30 minutes by taxi from Jeonju Hanok Village (roughly ₩20,000), so you can spend the day in Jeonju and be in a centuries-old courtyard by sunset. Even if you don’t stay overnight, you can visit Awon during the day with a ~₩10,000 admission, and Soyang Gotaek’s site has an English booking page, which makes reservations easy. Prices and hours change, so check their official sites before going.

I put together a full travel guide based on everything above — how to get there, where to stay, a 2-day itinerary. You can find the details : here

Happy to answer questions if anyone’s thinking about adding this to a Jeonju trip.
Photos: Korea Tourism Organization

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