Thursday, 26 March 2026

Sangdomun Village

In addition to Sangdomun, there is also a Jungdomun and a Hadomun. These mean Upper Domun, Middle Domun, and Lower Domun. I visit Sangdomun because it has lots of stone walls, traditional houses, and cats.

I've posted photos of the village a number of times in the past, but a few here are different than what I've done before.

Home and Council Office
This is what I see when I get off Bus 7 at the village. The closest building has a traditional Korean roof, but the rest is more modern. The ground floor seems short and may be storage for farming equipment. The next floor looks a normal height. There might even be an attic, judging by the window.  The building in the background is a local government office for the Daepo Neighbourhood of Sokcho. Although it's a 'neighbourhood', in the rural areas of a city it can contain many villages. I like that the building is not grey like most government buildings.
Eastern End of the Village
This is the view of some of the village from the road through town. This house is another 'hybrid' traditional style. It irks me that the tip of the left utility pole is sticking up slightly over the mountain line. Alas, there was nothing I could stand on to fix that.
Café Cat
I often meet this cat when I pass the café. It's a bit shy, so I don't approach it. It took me a little while to make sure all the verticals and horizontals were straight. I rather like that a traditional roof is well-framed in the window to the right.
Stone Wall and Clay Jar
This jar is at the entrance to a property and appears to be decorative. The yellow line might be meant to show up in car headlights in poor light.
Korean Wall, Western House
The tiles on this western-style house look like they are made of sheet metal or perhaps plastic rather than traditional clay. On the left, you can see a traditional house in the background, though I think its roof is made of sheets of moulded metal. It continues the line of tiled roof into the left part of the frame. Which is repeated in the tile covering the wall.
Road and Wall
I rather like the composition of this picture. The left and right sides of the frame are balanced by utility poles, I made sure only the roofs were above the stone wall, and the stone wall is mirrored by the dark line of asphalt running down the centre of the road. I didn't want the top of the wall on the right to cover the edge of the roof, but if I had stepped left to separate them, the edge of the roof on the far right would have gotten 'tangled up' with the utility pole, and I thought that would look worse.
Old General Store
You can't see it in this picture, but fading signs say that this place used to sell film, stamps, food, meat, and general goods. Agfa and some company called First Synthetic Fibres sponsored the sign. 'Samsung Colour' is written on another part of the sign, which means film might have been developed here or, more likely, sent it off to some photo lab called Samsung Colour. I didn't include all that because I was just interested in the Agfa sign, the wood frame window, the clean white wall, and the bench.


At the upper end of the town there are some metalwork animals attached to a bridge rail. The building in the background is the Domun Centre for Agricultural Song. More generally, I think, a place for preserving and learning traditional arts.
Painted Cat and Empty Lot
There are lots of these rock painting cats in the village. Some birds as well. There was a derelict Korean traditional home on this property, but it was recently torn down. A sign says that this is now a free parking lot for locals and tourists.

All photos straight out of a Nikon Z50II. Straight out of camera because I can't be arsed to post process anymore, and the small Z50II because I'm tired of lugging around heavy equipment.


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