• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
• /
• v.31 no.2
• /
• pp.213-254
• /
• 1996

The Korean Geographical Society was founded in 1945, when Korea was liberated from the Japanese rule. And The Journal of the Korean Geography activated academic studies of geography by publishing research papers in it. Professor Kang, Dae-Hyun wrote the first two specialized papers of rural geography in 1966: " Flood Plain Settlements on the Han River" and "The Location and Form of the Dispersed Villages around Dae-Cwan-Ryung". The early studies of rural geography were not based on serious academic foundations, such as the adjustment of theoretical notions and a good grasp of subjects. After choosing subjects that came to hand without academic consideration. they simply enumerated generalized items of the results of the field work investigation such as the location the landscape and the process of formation of the settlements. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, rural settlement studies progressed remarkably in Korea. More than 80% of 318 dissertations, theses, or papers collected for this review were written in the late 1980s, and the subjects and methodology became diversified. As may be expected, recent studies are found very systematic and problem-solving in the various fields - contexual understanding spatial structure, the development of clan villages according to the socialization process, the effects of rural-out migration on the change of villages etc. Such a trend can be understood as a reaction to the circumstances under which, as the Western society already experienced, rural villages become washed out by the waves of industralization and urbanization and hardly continue to exist. In this paper, geographical studies of rural settlement which have been carried out in Korea last fifty years will be reviewed under the four headings on the studies related to a) farming villages; b) fishing villages; c) mountain villages: and d) special function villages. Studies of farming villages and related ones are very diverse. The results of the studies carried out last fifty years can be classified into sixteen subjects. Just as, in the West, studies of rural settlement have been mainly concerned with farming villages since rural geography came into being, so, in Korea, they have been centred on farming villages. It is a natural result considering the history of human life. Even in Korea, however the rural settlement is no more an isolated life space which keeps unique traditions of old life style, but it begins to form a dynamic life space connected to big cities by heavy traffic. Because the modern farming villages of Korea have an undetachable connection with the cities, special methodology to solve new problems has been posed in the studies of rural settlement. Many scholars have produced a lot of studies of farming villages, and three of them are prominent: Oh. Hong-Seok, Choi, Ki-Yeop, and Lee, Moon-Jong. Oh, Hong-Seok is a versatile and hard-working scholar who has published more papers than anyone else in the various fields of rural geography such as farming villages, fishing villages, mountain villages, and reclamation villages. And he has expanded his concerns to environment issues in recent years. Choi, Ki-Yeop has maintained that the prototype of Korean rural villages is clan villages continuing to write a series of good papers in which he pursues their regionalizion in the process of socialization. Lee, Moon-Jong divides the spatial organization of side settlement, sahachon (settlement near the temple), religion settlement, orchard settlement, settlement near the foreign military camp, displaced people's settlement. Chung Gam Lok settlement, etc. Though The Korean Geographical Society has half a century's history, academic activties in the field of rural settlement have been performed no more than thirty years. We cannot help saying that it is admirable that in such a rather short time we have five academical schools of the rural geography in Korea. geography in Korea.