Photos

Photo: This is a poor stitch of three poor shots of a Korean traditional house. (I now value obtaining a wide angle lens and am trying hard to afford one on eBay. So far I lost one auction.) Rather, I do not post this photo for the picture but for the significance of the place.

The Place: While born in Seoul, Admiral Yi Sun Shin moved with his family to outside Asan, ChoongCheongNahmDo Province when he was a little boy. The well on the grounds is supposedly the same well that he drank from.

The story behind the hit TV drama series Immortal Yi Sun Shin has it that his family was exiled there due to his father's fulfilling his Confusion filial duties for his own deceased father who I surmise was in the losing faction in a prior court.

His family belonged to the hereditary upper class of scholar nobles of old Korea called the YeangBahns. Due to his family circumstances, however, they were less well to do YeangBahns. Supposedly this house was quite modest by the contemporary YeangBahn standards.
The mentioned TV series Immortal Yi Sun Shin even has him and his father engaged in tilling the soil which no self-respecting YeangBahn would have been caught doing. (In old Korea, there were classes of people. Farming was lower than YeangBahn- the scholar noble.) But this house looked pretty big/good to my standards (just missing a few modern amenities like broadband access).

HyeongChoongSah, the Memorial to YiSunShin, now surrounds this residence. There is a shrine in the back where memorial service is held yearly in his honor by his descendants. (Though his family was persecuted due to his grandfather, his descendants faired much better due to his legacy.)

Though some of his relations are buried in a mortuary next to the house, his own resting place lies about 6 km from this location at another part of Asan.