A clan village on a bend of the river

Hahoe Village stands in Hahoe-ri, Pungcheon-myeon, in Andong, Gyeongsangbuk-do. It is described as a traditional folk village with six hundred years behind it. In the Goryeo period the Heo clan settled there. The An clan followed, and in the early Joseon period the Pungsan Ryu clan made it a clan village that still carries their name.

The houses have not been cleared away for a set. Tile-roofed homes once used by the yangban stand with the thatched earthen-wall houses of ordinary families. Two national treasures are named: the Hahoe and Byeongsan masks, National Treasure No. 121, and the Jingbirok, National Treasure No. 132, together with four treasures among the state-designated properties.

A village was never only a patch of ground. It was a unit of work that shared dure, pumasi, and gye; a ritual circle that helped at weddings and funerals; and, above all, a faith community that kept the dongje, the village rite. Hahoe sits among a handful of folk villages that still hold to an older way of living: Nagan eupseong in Suncheon, Yangdong in Gyeongju, Seongeup on Jeju, Wanggok in Goseong, and Oeam in Asan. As many as fifty thousand naturally formed villages are counted in the country, of many kinds; that figure is left with the 1994–2008 sources.

These folk villages are described as clan communities, marked by a Confucian everyday culture. Each has its own mask play, festival, and faith, and those arts are what pull neighbours together. Yangban and commoners, who once stood in a sharp upper and lower order, are said to have shared roles and taken part side by side — a habit of inclusion treated here as part of a Korean character.

Chosen for a World Heritage announcement, and already under strain

Hahoe and Yangdong had been chosen as candidates for a final World Heritage announcement. Hahoe is praised for its site, its history, its social makeup, and a cultural character strong enough to stand as a Korean identity and as a place that could be recognised for a more universal value. For cultural visitors, it is said to hold enough meaning, history, and living tradition to be worth the journey.

The harder part is already in view. Use and conservation pull in opposite directions, and the legal frame for a state-designated folk village is described as thin. Residents and officials collide. Careless commercial work wears down the original form of the village, and a livelier tourist trade brings friction between the people who live there and the people who come to look. If the heritage is going to be used at all, the first duty is that the resource itself should last. Visitors, residents, government, and tourism policy all have to sit in some kind of accord.

Most studies have been written from the visitor’s side or the product developer’s side. Serious talk in Korean scholarship about how to keep the value of a folk village and still use it has been scarce. Careless development that chases commerce and ignores conservation can strip the village of the look that made it itself. A close look at what stakeholders actually do to protect the place has not drawn much interest.

A split administration, and a village that is hard to live in

On the institutional side, conservation work is split. One office, for tangible cultural heritage, treats the village as important folklore material. Another, for monuments, treats it as a historic site. The two lines of work do not meet. Staff at the Cultural Heritage Administration and at the village management office are described as so caught up in a preservation-first habit that they only make the village more closed. Reckless development would not help either the living or those who come after. Work should be slow, long-sighted, and as kind as it can be to the landscape and the heritage. The basic direction given for cultural-property care is to keep the original form, to be cautious in conservation projects, to avoid rash excavation, and to keep the surroundings in harmony.

Even a legal designation is not enough if no one on the ground knows the place well. Cities and counties have officials, but the work is often held only for a time, and a passing brief does not grow a sense of duty. The ideal is a curatorial post, filled by someone trained in the field, in any city or county that holds a folk village. Those staff would not only manage the site. They could also teach neighbours about the heritage under their feet.

Day-to-day management has its own troubles. Official interference in the name of conservation makes ordinary life uncomfortable. Running costs lean on subsidies from the Cultural Heritage Administration, and there should be room to draw support from large firms, heritage groups, and tourism groups as well. Specialists in heritage and in tourism are not living on site, and that absence is felt.

Visits are rising, yet the quality of service is described as slipping rather than rising. Traditional festivals and play, the very things that would let a guest take part, are scarce or missing. There is little traditional lodging, little space to sell local crafts, and no real care for rooms and meals that would let a foreign visitor feel an ondol floor or a papered window — a culture they may never have met. Publicity is not organised. What is asked for is a shared database and sites that stay up to date, fuller use of the Korea Tourism Organization’s information system and of local government systems, and booklets and brochures left where travellers actually pass — at the site, at terminals, at inns and restaurants — with tapes or slides for agencies abroad and a chance for trade partners to walk the village themselves.

The people who still live there

A folk village is not the same as a place a visitor merely walks through. Residents should not be treated as natives of a tourist site. They are the people who still carry the tradition, and their lives need protection. State funds meant to support daily life are described as poorly used. Farming is almost the only economic work, and a small trade in local goods and souvenirs that could help a household is barely in place. Holders of traditional crafts and arts have no separate means of livelihood. Some voices even suggest a kind of fossilising — a folk-village or open-air-museum model, staged folklore, a built stage for tourists — as a way to keep the heritage from being worn down. That view is noted, without being turned into a programme.

What is asked for is a change of official mind: not only a defensive watch over objects, but an active effort to keep a living tradition through tourism that does not empty it out. Residents have been heard to say that if designation brings only orders and supervision, with no real help, they would rather have the designation lifted. That complaint should not be waved away. Conservation work should be brought under one office, instead of being split between the tangible-heritage and monuments divisions of the Cultural Heritage Administration. For folk villages across the country, it also proposes a broader body joining specialists from the Administration and from the Tourism Bureau of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, as those offices were then named.

A residents’ self-governing preservation council is encouraged, so that conservation starts from the will and the daily life of the people who live there, and so that plans can be adjusted village by village. New designations should rest on careful study — cultural fairness and kinship, creativity, history, tradition, a living economy, and cultural strength — and visitors should be able to come and go without doing more harm than can be helped to the households already there.

Guests come for a traditional life, for a touch of old memory, and for a people’s history. An exhibition or education hall at the edge of the village would help them arrive already informed, so that a foreign visitor might see a way of life clearly, and a Korean visitor might leave with some pride and a lesson for the present. A folk village should not be just another stop on a tour. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. Kim Gwang-geun, “The Need for Regional Tourism Development and the Direction of Its Introduction,” Tourism Research, 1994.
2. Kim So-i, “A Study on the Direction of Cultural Heritage Management in Korea,” doctoral dissertation, Kyonggi University, 2008.
3. Kim Ju-hui, “A Study on the Conservation and Use of Folk Villages,” Cultural Heritage Studies, 2005.
4. Gu Gyeong-yeo and others, “Institutional and Actor Constraints on Private Investment in Regional Tourism Development,” Korean Governance Review, 2008.

Last updated: 14 November 2026