A New Home in Seoul Looks to the Past Marcel Lam for The New York Times Hongnam Kim, an art professor, preservationist and former museum director, built two conjoined hanoks, traditional wooden structures, in Seoul. A few years ago, when Hongnam Kim, a professor here at Ewha Womans University, decided to build a house, she knew she wanted it to take the form of a hanok, the traditional wooden structure dating back to the Joseon dynasty in 1392. But she also needed a modern basement where she could pursue her work. Dr. Kim, who is 64, is an art historian, but not just any art historian. She is a former director-general of the National Museum of Korea and a former director of the National Folk Museum, and currently helps to run the National Trust of Korea, a nongovernment environmental and cultural preservationist group. She is also a perfectionist, and she knows her hanoks. Still, she is a woman in a patriarchal society. Asked how the construction crew liked taking orders from a woman, she said, laughing: "I really annoyed all the workers. They never met anyone like me in their careers. I had many things redone. Like all of the walls surrounding the property. To the casual observer, those granite walls look as if they extend straight up from the ground. "The outer walls have to be at an angle of 10 to 15 degrees pointing in at the top, or it looks like it's leaning away," Dr. Kim explained. It's an optical illusion that it's straight. When she discovered that the workers had built the walls straight, she had them torn down and rebuilt correctly. It took two years and $1 million, but she finally built the home she had envisioned, two conjoined hanoks (one for her and one for guests), each about 1,600 square feet with its own garden measuring about 533 square feet. The home was completed in 2010, with the help of Lee Moon-ho, a local architect trained in traditional architecture. But why live in a hanok rather than a modern home? For the sense of architectural history or as a way to preserve Korean culture? Or just because of how it looks? "All those reasons," Dr. Kim said. And partly, my memory of my childhood. Home was a hanok in Jinju city, in a southern province. Of course, her home is not just a testament to the past - she made sure to install modern bathrooms, sleek kitchen appliances, air-conditioning and double-hung windows. But there is no hint of any of that from the exterior. And even inside, many of the modern amenities are shielded by traditional wood-framed doors. In the tradition of a hanok, there were spaces for entertaining, men's quarters, women's quarters and servants" quarters. Dr. Kim, who lives alone, with a 15-year-old Shih Tzu named Toto, divided her hanoks into an anchae (her residence) and a sarangchae (a guesthouse). Her bedroom is upstairs in the residence. Downstairs, where she spends most of her time, is a library with thousands of art books. A separate entrance allows her students access to the library from the street. She uses the other house for entertaining. Upstairs is a guest room, and downstairs is an open living area with a pristine white kitchen. Throughout her home, translucent doors of pine lattice frame paper-covered glass. As the sun pours through the lattice patterns, there is a constant play of light and shadow on the pine floors. A visitor noticed that they gleamed, unspoiled by dust or grit tracked in on shoes. That's because it's the custom in Korea to exchange one's shoes for slippers before entering a home. Dr. Kim puts the shoes on a wooden tray, which she hides under a step on the veranda. "Contemporary shoes are not pretty in the context of a hanok," she said. Sitting beside her on the veranda, in slippered feet, the visitor reflected on the pleasures of this peaceful, shoeless life. As Dr. Kim put it, "When you are in a modern building, you are walled off, a cold partition dividing you and the world outside." But in a hanok, "you are surrounded by nature, by the open sky, the smell of wood, and you do not go out." It's a wonderful place to be, all the time.