Abstract
The main purpose of this study is to examine concretely the spatial changes in a suburban area of a local Korean city under Japanese colonial domination by analyzing changes in land use and land ownership. This study also intends to reveal the meaning of symbolic places, which were explained in the “Pungsu Thoughts, ” by analyzing cadastal maps and cadasters, and supplementally interviewing local people. The study area, Kyodong-ri village (present Yongdang-dong and Taeseong-dong), was a suburb of Ch'eongju City which was administractive center of North Ch'ungch'eong province.
The results of the study are summaraized as follows:
1. Spatial changes in the study area were generally limited to farmlands developed on the lowlands by the riverside and on gentle slopes in the mountains. These farmlands, which were privately owned by Koreans in Kyodong-ri and its vicinity, were divided and replaced in 1920 and in 1924-28 to construct infrastructure such as new roads, irrigation canals, and reservoirs. Therefore some of the land was purchased by the Government-General of Choseon. From the late 1930s the farmland in the western part of old Kyodong-ri, near the city area of Ch'eongju, became residential land owned by Korean citizens who lived in the city area. In the same period, some companies and Japanese who had begun to live not only in large cities but also in the suburbs of Ch'eongju gradually started to occupy farmland and even small forests.
2. Most of the forests on the ridges of the Uam Mountains, which occupied 60% of the total area of old. Kyodong-ri, were preserved because continued to be owned by a few clans in the neighborhood or by the Hyanggyo (village school), although some of the national forests were disposed of. Therefore only a few companies and the new landowners who lived in the city area occupied the upland forests. We can still see the tombs of clans standing in a line along the narrow forests and see the farmland and houses surrounded by these mountain ridges. In the interviews with me, the elderly inhabitants stated that the occupancy of small land holdings on mountain ridges by new landowners was unfavorable to them, because the land had special implications and they felt that mountain ridges must be maintained with the forests.
