With Seoul easing standards for hanok construction, a wider variety of hanok buildings is expected to rise in the Insadong area of Jongno-gu. Tourist accommodations will be expanded at major tourist spots in Seoul such as Namdaemun Market, Deoksugung, Gwanghwamun Square, Cheonggyecheon and Namsan, as well as around Bukchang-dong in Jung-gu.
The city said on the 25th that it held the Urban Architecture Joint Committee and approved with amendments the "Insadong district unit plan decision (change) (draft)." The key is a major easing of the criteria required to be recognized as a hanok.
First, the floor area required for hanok recognition was lowered from at least 70% to at least 50%. A building can be recognized as a hanok if only half of its total floor area has a hanok structure. Once classified as a hanok, various support is available during construction and repair.
Roofing materials, which previously had to be traditional Korean roof tiles, can now use modern materials. The aboveground structure also moves away from allowing only traditional wooden framing, permitting other structural methods within a certain range to be applied together. As a result, builders' options for hanok will expand, and hanok construction that maintains traditional forms while offering modern convenience is expected to be revitalized.
The maximum development scale in Insadong, previously divided into eight categories, was integrated and adjusted into three: inside Insadong, buffer zones and arterial edges. A recommended-use system was also newly established to protect traditional cultural businesses while promoting street vitality. This is the first change to the Insadong district unit plan in 16 years since 2009.
The city also made it possible to relax floor area ratio limits by up to 1.3 times when building tourist accommodations. Additional incentives, such as easing height or building coverage ratio, will be provided when converting aging lodging facilities like existing motels into tourist accommodations.