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The Chi-ong Art Center is a hanok-style culture complex situated amid a clean and quiet environment in Gyeonggi-do Province. The head of the art center, potter Kim Ho, originally ran a cultural life school for residents in Pocheon, but he settled at the foot of Chungnyeongsan Mountain in Gapyeong, Gyeonggi Province after the school was severely damaged by a huge flood in 1997. Kim established the center as a space to support the cultural and leisure activities of local residents and the creative activities of talented youth and artists. It took four years to build and comprises a gallery, seminar room, hanok accommodation, Korean restaurant, etc.
The center attracts various types of guests including people who appreciate the beauty of hanok and the local landscape, family visitors, company groups, and couples among others. The overall structure of the center is very distinguished, and consists of three levels resembling staircases: the first level contains a Korean restaurant, the second level has a lecture room with a capacity of 60 persons, as well as a gallery with a pond and a pavilion set in a Korean garden; and the third level has guestrooms furnished with a toenmaru (a narrow wooden porch running along the outside of the building) and ondol floor heating, as well as a tall gate, a wide front yard, and tearoom. Although it was only built just over ten years ago, visitors say that it seems like an old hanok house because of the unvarnished roof tiles and the surrounding stonewall, which was built in the traditional dry-stone method using only local stones.
The center offers diverse experience programs including tea ceremony, natural dyeing, mask, rice cake, and bean curd making programs, as well as a boudoir handicraft program. Its “prestige” program is the advanced tea ceremony class in which the head of the center teaches participants how to brew tea according to traditional etiquette, etc. As the Chi-ong Art Center has no TV or Internet, visitors have an opportunity to empty their heads and relax amid the serene environment, appreciate nature, take a walk in the garden or simply read a book. |
