- A study on the wooden structures in Koryo Period-

compared with Chinese Ying Zao Fa Shi

The cultural communication between Korea and China has continued for thousands of years and the two nation's architectural culture enjoyed very close relationship. But there are so many differences between the two culture as they shared so many familar points. So, what is the familar? What is the difference? While the world becomes more and more similar, to research on such problems has important meanings for a certain culture.

Due to many reasons there is almost no wooden-stuctures built before Koryo period in Korea left for us, this made the attempt to explain the development of Korea tradtional architecture a difficult work. Fourtunately there are still many Chinese wooden-structures can be drawned as comparable objects.More important, compared with Ying Zao Fa Shi, a documents as official law and technology summarization before Song Dynasty published in A.D 1100, many problems can be find out on the development of Korean traditional wooden-structures, or, architecture.

Therefore, as a first step of such  researches on the relationship bertween Korean and Chinese architecture, this thesis aims to find out the same and difference between the wooden sructures of Koryo period and  Ying Zao Fa Shi initially. At the end of this research, we can draw some basical conclusions as the following:          

Firstly, by comparing the wooden constructions built in Koryo period with Ying Zao Fa Shi, we can find they are the same or similar on many items. It can be believed that there was some kind of direct or indirect relationship between the Koryo wooden structures and Chinese Ying Zao Fa Shi.

Secondly, while the architectures in Koryo period influnced greatly by Chinese architecture or Ying Zao Fa Shi,the unique character of Korean traditional architecture had been developed   and almost completed. Such characters lasted throughout the following period, namely, Cho-sun Dynasty and made Korea architectures different from the Chinese or Japanese ones.

Thirdly, the characters of different times' Chinese architectures, from Tang Dynasty to Yuan Dynasty, can be found in a same architecture built in Koryo period. Such facts implied some problems on the development of Korean architecture. Namely the Korean Peninsula absorbed Chinses architectural culture through a complexity process and formed it's own style finally.

Lastly through the initial research on the module system of wooden architecutres in Koyro period, we can say that in this time Korea had already formed a certain module system to standardize the construction activities. Such system is quite similar with the one of Ying Zao Fa Shi,at the same time, it has different details from Chinese ones.

Chapt1  Preface

Chapt2 The cultural communication between China and Korea before Koryo Period

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