Yangdong Folk Village

Yangdong was listed alongside Hahoe as the second of Korea's surviving yangban villages, and it is the larger and the less visited of the two. Two clans, the Wolseong Son and the Yeogang Yi, have lived here since the fifteenth century, and the layout still shows the old order plainly: the tiled roofs of the gentry houses stand high on the hillsides, the thatched cottages of their tenants sit below, and everything faces out over rice fields. Around 150 houses remain, several of them among the oldest private homes standing in the country, and roughly half are still lived in. Only a handful open inside, which is the trade for the place being real.

What you actually see

• Seobaekdang - one of the oldest houses, on the upper slope beside an ancient juniper.
• Hyangdan - the grandest of the gentry houses, unusual in its plan.
• Gwangajeong - the hillside house with the widest view over the fields.
• The hillside order - tiled roofs above, thatched cottages below, exactly as it was arranged.

When to go

Spring and autumn are the pleasant seasons; the village spreads across open hillsides with almost no shade in summer. Mornings and late afternoons are quietest and best for photographs. Some houses open only at certain times and some not at all, with no fixed schedule, so treat interiors as a bonus rather than a plan.

Honest expectations

The village runs over several hills and seeing it properly means an hour or two of walking lanes in the sun. Most houses are private homes, so you look from outside and should not wander into courtyards. Facilities are few, buses from Gyeongju are infrequent, and it is plainer and quieter than Hahoe, which suits some visitors and bores others.

Nearby

Gyeongju is forty minutes south; Oksan Seowon lies in the next valley.