A Study on the Natural Village of Korea : Its Formation and Form

This study aims to examine the entity of natural village with a focus on its formation, form, and spatial distribution. Natural village is a prototype of rural settlement in that it is ubiquitously distributed al across the nation, and can be viewed as an ideal form in that it has existed continuously. In this study, the concept of natural village is identified and formative conditions of village form are discussed centering on the nucleated village. The units of natural village are also identified in terms of historical evolution and spatial system and function, and the form, types, and spatial distribution of villages are examined. And this study also tries to explain the relationship between the formative conditions and form by contrasting the distribution of types of natural village and regional settings. The findings of the study are summed up as follows 1) Natural village is a basic socioterritorial unit of the vi11agers, where it has a unique principle of formation and form of existence as a unified organization. So i t is the highest self-completing settlement unit of villages that shares the constituting atttributes of society to a parcel. Natural village is not a simple aggregation of houses, but is rather a self-sufficient unit of economy and a microcosmic being at once ditributed nationwide, compre-hending the general life of villagers and having an independent mode of existence. 2) Nucleated village is recognized as a spatial maifestation of specific village community in connection with " physical basis - agricultural economy - socioeconomic conditions - village community - village form" which are incurred from communality， demographic factors, and topographical conditions. The socioeconomic conditions based on the paddyfield farming become principal constituting factors of vil1age form with the village co血unity as an intermediary. The changes from a dry field farming to a paddyfield farming and from an expensive farming to an intensive farming provided a most influential momentum of nucleated villages. 3) Natural vi l1age which has develo야 due to the productivity growth based on the paddyfield famring since the Choseon Era is considered not to have been agitated of its locational inertia and seems to be in the process of being hollowed out or dismantled with its secondary dispersal insignificant. Natural village has been, horizontally, a spatial expression of the village community represented al1 across the nation, and has existed, vertically, as a forefront of administrative control within the relation of the nation and the villagers. Many of the functions of rural settlement were cumulated with the natural village as its territorial unit. 4) Natural village was the origin of the formation of village territoryand form mostly located as a topographical unit, and thereby so-called the "back mountains, front water location was represented, where residential and production space were seperated as the houses were concentrated, and the nucleated village was concurrently expedited