Cheongwonru House, Andong

This building was originally built around 1520 as a house for Kim Beon (1479-1544), a civil official of the Josecn period (1392-1910). In 1618, Kim Beon's great-grandson, Kim Sang-heon (1570-1652), renovated it into a pavilion.

During the Manchu invasion of 1937, Kim Sang-heon, then serving as minister of rites, strongly opposed the humiliating negotiations with the invaders. After the Korean king ultimately surrendered, Kim was taken as a hostage to Shenyang in Qing China and imprisoned there for six years as punishment for his anti-Qing stance. In 1645, Kim Sang-hecn returned with the crown prince Sohyeon (1612-1645) and secluded himself in today's Namyangju. Gyeonggi-do Province.

The name Cheongwollu, meaning "Pavilion of Far Clarity." comes from a line in a poem written by the Chinese philosopher and neo-Confucian scholar Zhou Dunyi (1017-1073) that reads "The farther a fragrance travels, the clearer it becomes. Because the Chinese character for "clarity" is the same as the character for Qing China, another interpretation of the name is “Pavilion of Staying Far from Qing”

There was originally another building standing alongside the current cne, but it was lost during a flood in 1934.

Source: Korea Heritage Service signboard ↗ · collected 2026-10-08