Colonial Tourism and Modernism in Korean Modern Architecture - Focused on Railroad Station during Japanese Ruling Era -

한국근대건축에서 식민지관광주의와 모더니즘에 관한 연구 - 일제강점기 철도역사 건축을 중심으로 -

Architectural style is said to be product reflecting political, social and cultural condition. Especially, in colony, architectural style is strongly related to political condition or policy. After colonization in 1910, public buildings with western historical architectural style in Japanese version were widely built by Japanese colonial government in Korea. And in the late 1920s, modernism style in architecture became dominant in Korea as like other countries. In this situation, curious buildings in strange architectural styles came out. One example is railroad station buildings with traditional Korean architectural style and timber house station having a steep roof which is widely used in North Europe such as Alps area with good sights and mountains. Generally, the colonizer says that colonization is the only way to save the colony at crisis defined by colonizer and they insist that they can help the colony modernize. To justify colonization, the colonizer attributes the colonization to the characteristics of the nation and stagnation of the traditional culture etc.. Accordingly, the colonizer tries to depreciate colony's traditional value and culture. In case of colony which has similar cultural background historically (in this case, economical exploitation is less important than other Asian colony by European power), this depreciation of traditional value and culture in Korea was done more strongly than others. At this time, we should understand special relation between Korea and Japan historically. Even though, colony's locality is adopted by the colonizer in public fields, which is based on political purpose or exotic taste etc.. In early days of Japanese ruling period, Japan never use the Korean traditional facts in public. Therefore there is no use of Korean traditional architectural style in public field. In late 1920s, some railroad station buildings were constructed in new styles without precedence in modern Korea. One is railroad station buildings in Korean traditional architectural style, the other is railroad station buildings in timber house stations having a steep roof which is different form western historical architectural style. It was mystery that Japan had constructed railroad stations in Korean traditional style which Japan had tried to destroy together with Western style railroad station buildings. This paper is made to solve the mystery why the colonizer(Japan) constructed entirely different types of railroad stations at the same time in the late 1920s and 1930s. The key point to solve this mystery is tourism. In this paper, to solve this mystery, I try to use terminology' 'Colonial Tourism' in architecture why colonial power had constructed railroad stations with colony's traditional architectural style and Western style having a steep roof which can be seen north European region.