Review: Architecture and Urbanism in Modern Korea by Inha Jung

Abstract

Inha Jung Architecture and Urbanism in Modern Korea Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2013, 208 pp., 114 color and 84 b/w illus. $42.00. ISBN 9780824835859 Inha Jung’s Architecture and Urbanism in Modern Korea is a comprehensive overview of Korean architecture and urbanism from the late nineteenth century to the present. This text, the first survey of its kind in English, offers a thorough examination of the built environment of modern Korea by systemically moving from larger urban issues to vernacular housing and canonical architectural designs. Based on the assumption that architectural trends have kept in line with the formation of urban space, the book provides a detailed analysis of planning idioms and regulatory regimes that resulted in the significant changes of urban structure of the 1930s, 1970s, and the early twenty-first century. Equal emphasis is given to the historical transformation of urban housing from urban hanok to apartment buildings. Close analysis of the changing patterns of residential space not only adds to our understanding of everyday urban life but also offers a wealth of insight into the formation of architects’ spatial consciousness. The main thesis of the book, as clearly indicated in the introduction, is to examine Korean architects’ odyssey toward a “modern identity that can be called their own” (xii). Despite its encyclopedic coverage of architecture and urbanism throughout the last century, the author’s interest revolves around two opposing but complementary goals: one, an investigation of historical changes and discontinuity in Korean architecture, and the other, an identification of its unique nature and continuity. As the built environment of modern Korea has been largely shaped by the nation’s unique modernization, one that has been imported, delayed, and rapidly processed, its trajectory is characterized by the complicated process of conflict and negotiation between foreign influence and regional specificity. As such, the issue …