Abstract
In the traditional subsistence farming era in Korea, most of small farmer's housing plots in the rural villages had their boundary barriers of which materials being the natural ones provided from nearby places. However, during the rapid industrialization period from 1960s, a traditional type of boundary barriers in the rural villages had been replaced mostly by low-cost factory-made ones, which means absolute loss of their amenity values as a linear part of villagescape. In spite of many study efforts on boundary barriers of traditional rural houses, detailed historical dating on them after 1960s have not tried up to now, which provoked to try this study. Through the direct and in-depth interviews to rural villagers sampled from 21 case villages, it was found that original boundary barriers structure in most of farm houses was made of natural materials like stone, soil, trees and bamboo, but, replaced by cement block structures mostly during Saemaeul Project period. However, although being relatively minority, traditional ones have been preserved up to now mainly in remote mountainous and seashore villages, but was in very low condition. In the overall view, for more than half a century, boundary barriers of farm houses had been left without public or private improvement efforts. In order to enhance their amenity values, more research works should be carried out on positive reassessment of the traditional ones harmonized with multifunctionalities for modern village life.
