Andong Hahoe& Gyoengju Yangdong Clan villages from the Joseon Dynasty.
The 34th meeting of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in Brazil on July 31, 2010 became a special day for Korea, as Hahoe Village (in Andong City) and Yangdong Village (in Gyeongju City) were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List as official “Historic Villages of Korea.” Both locations are known as “clan villages,” where residents of the same family name have been living together for hundreds of years. Hahoe Village in Andong has been inhabited by members of the Ryu clan of Pungsan (ancestral home of the Ryu clan) for over 600 years. Yangdong in Gyeongju has been the home of the Son clan of Gyeongju and the Lee clan of Yeogang for approximately 500 years.* Hahoe and Yangdong received UNESCO Committee designation in recognition of the villages’ preservation of the structures and ideology of the traditional Confucian culture of the Joseon Era (1392-1910). Each village is set deep in the heart of nature and contains numerous traditional buildings (complete with tiled or thatched roofs) that have been almost perfectly preserved for hundreds of years.