In Korea, the direction of houses are typically determined by considering the directional orientation and shape of the mountain range rather than ignoring the geographical feature of the mountain range. Traditional villages of Korea are known to have very particular ways of adopting the geomantic surroundings of natural environment. This is very true especially in decision of the directional orientation of the houses in the village. Almost all houses have a high mountain in the back and a lower mountain in front. At the same time, most of the houses tend to prefer south as a main direction so that they can receive more sun light. However, if the mountain range faces north, it will not be easy to determine the directional orientation of houses. This paper, therefore, tries to identify how the houses of villages facing north, direct the orientation. This, the northern village, solves the problem by facing all direction rather than one major direction. The houses of the villages facing north, tend to revise the direction by changing the back mountain(주산) or front mountain(안산) that helps them change the direction towards the range of eastern or western direction. As a result, the houses tend to the direction towards east and west compared to north and south. The directional orientation of houses was clearly distributed or concentrated by depending on the shape and directional orientation of the mountain range. This kind of research let us know the relationship between the natural north direction, the direction of geomantic surrounding, and the direction of houses in traditional Korean villages.

This paper discusses of the problem of direction and orientation of site design of a traditional Korean village. The research focus on how the directional orientation of each houses adapt the direction of the flow of surrounding mountains. The direction of mountains worked as a prime rule which most of the houses( 76.6%) observed the same direction as their own orientation. While the central part of the village followed the direction of mountains more strictly, however the houses on the periphery area tend to be more free from the direction of mountains. This houses of the periphery respect either the direction of the mountain flow right behind the house or faces toward the south.