In broad agreement on the need for forests in the city, researches on the urban forest are being actively carried out. Nonetheless, since these researches focus on functional usage within living spaces, finding methods for creation of urban forests and technical solutions have remained chief issues as a consequence. This paper, which attempts to historically examine the properties of the urban forest within living space, has the characteristics of researching basic angles for approaching the creation of contemporary urban forests. For this purpose Joseon Dynasty genre paintings, which represent living conditions of Joseon era, have been decided as theme of the paper. Particularly the focus was limited to genre paintings depicting trees, giving phenomenal observations. As a result, some remarkable characteristics emerged as functional urban forest, symbolic urban forest, topological urban forest, and appreciative urban forest. Urban forest within living space mainly appear as functional, showing an even distribution in small numbers rather than gathering in large groups. The following can be inferred regarding this and related to the setting up of the scope of, and creating of, contemporary urban forest : First, from the viewpoint of urban forest creation there is a need to study more subdivided and refined types of the urban forest and to actually realize these types. Second, from the viewpoint of urban forest usage, one needs to approach existing forests, ranging from small-scale including invididual trees, to mid-, large-, and super scale, as urban forests. In this, a network of major trees, and thereby a matrix of all trees formed by that network, will be formed. Third, from the viewpoint of urban forest improvement, approaches need to be based on planting trees in even distribution across the whole city.