Sudoguksan Museum of Housing and Living

The museum is located within Songhyun Park, Dong-gu Incheon. Consisting of two floors (one aboveground, one belowground) the museum exhibits the life of citizens living in ‘daldongne’ (the impoverished hillside areas). It exhibits reproductions of various scenes of daily life from the 1960s and 1970s, people at: a barbershop, a store selling coal briquettes, a small sundries store, and a communal water supply area and restroom.

In the museum, visitors can play dice games, change coal briquettes, and try on school uniforms of the past, as well as purchase souvenirs. The museum hopes to remind visitors of the poor, but close-knit atmosphere of the old hillside area and provide them with educational opportunities to learn about life during the 1960s and 1970s.

* What is ‘daldongne’?
Literally meaning ‘moon village,’ it refers to villages located high on the hilltops, where residents can easily see the moon. The first, ‘Daldongne,’ originated back in the late 1950s, early 1960s when people ousted from the city for economic reasons began to live in tent areas designated by the government. These ‘Dalnara Cheonmakchon’ (moon tent villages) were typically located on the hillside where residents could see the moon and stars when lying in their beds at night. Although the word ‘Daldongne’ reminds many Koreans of trying times in the past, it also conjures up an image of a time when neighborhoods worked hard and shared what little they had with each other.