Gangwon

Ojukheon House

Ojukheon is a 16th-century scholar-aristocrat residence in Gangneung, Gangwon, best known as the birthplace of two of the most revered figures of Joseon Korea: Yi I (Yulgok), the great Neo-Confucian philosopher, and his mother Shin Saimdang, painter and Confucian model woman whose face appears today on the 50,000-won note. The compound combines several preserved buildings — the original birth chamber, an ancestral shrine, a memorial hall — with a still-active black-bamboo ("ojuk") grove that gives the site its name. A small museum traces the family's intellectual legacy. Allow ninety minutes. Free entry. Pair with Gangneung Coffee Street and Gyeongpo Beach.