Okyeon pavilion / 옥연정사

Ogyeonjeongsa House was established by Ryu Seong-yong (pen-name: Seoae, 1542-1607), a minister of Joseon, with the help of Buddhist monk Tanhong, as a place to study and educate his students. After building Wonjijeongsa House, Ryu wanted to build another house at the foot of Buyongdae Cliff amid a tranquil environment away from the village, but due to his financial situation he was unable to complete the building by himself. Then, the monk Tanhong helped him build Ogyeonjeongsa House, which took ten years (1576 to 1586) to complete, when Ryu was 45 years old. Later, Ryu Seong-yong was able to share warmth with his brother (Gyeomam), who lived in nearby Gyeomamjeongsa House. Ryu later lost his house in Hahoe in the great flood of the Nakdonggang River in 1605, and retired to Ogyeongjeongsa House where he wrote Jingbirok (The Book of Correction, National Treasure 132), a memoir of the Imjin War (Japanese Invasion of Korea in 1592). The house’s guestrooms include Sesimjae (meaning ‘having a mind to this place to achieve at least one in ten thousand things,’ inspired by the I Ching or The Book of Changes), which was used by Ryu as a schoolhouse and has two small rooms between the maru gamheonrok (wooden floor, meaning ‘looking up at the sky and down at the blue water,’ inspired by Wang Xizhi’s poetic diction); Wonlakjae (meaning ‘waiting for a friend’s visit,’ inspired by the Analects of Confucius), in which Ryu himself resided and wrote Jingbirok; and the maru aeoheon (meaning ‘I also love my hut,’ taken from a poem by Chinese poet Tao Yuanming), which measures two kan (a unit of measurement referring to the distance between two columns).