Research on Regional Characteristics of South Korean Confucian Gugok Gardens and Landscape Concept

After Zhu Xi’s Neo-Confucianism was introduced into the Korean Peninsula, the Korean Confucian gardens — “Gugok Gardens” emerged accordingly and formulated the regional Gugok culture. The existing researches focus on the culture of Gugok, but fail to fully explore the regional characteristics and landscape concept of Gugok Gardens. On the basis of tracing the origin of Gugok Gardens in South Korea, this research analyzes the time evolution and spatial layout characteristics of the construction, and probes into the landscape concept from the cultural background, construction process, spatial pattern and landscape artistic conception of Ok-san Gugok, as a typical case. The result shows that 1) Gugok Gardens began to rise at the end of the Goryeo period and reached the peak in the middle of the North Korea period. They were mainly distributed in Changbai Mountains and the banks of Nakdong River. 2) Korean Confucian scholars followed the example of Ok-san Gugok built by Wuyi, showing the spatial pattern of “three curves and nine bends” and “one tune and one scene”. 3) The landscape artistic conception in Ok-san Gugok Song contains the philosophical thought of the integration of thing and self and the view of the practice of Neo-Confucianism. Therefore, Korean Gugok Gardens not only testify the local evolution of Zhu Xi’s Neo-Confucianism, but also reflect China’s cultural self-confidence, which is an intuitive expression of the inheritance and development of Chinese Confucianism overseas.