Journal of the Korean Geographical Society ISSN:1225-6633(Print) 대한지리학회지

Janghowon, a wayside inn at the crossroad of transportation-cum-communication lines in the interior Gyeonggi Province, accommodated high-ranking emissaries, merchants and other travelling people on their way to Seoul and midway places with lodging. Established in Pyongchon, Eumjuk County prior to the 12th century, the chartered facility gave way to taverns and a periodic market during the first half of the 18th century, leaving behind a vernacular toponym of Janghowon given to the riverine villages of Pyongchon and Seockyochon. In addition to transportation, the fortune of Janghowon was driven by growing agrarian productivity aided by Jajom diversion dam on Chungmicheon River and by just as booming market economies as well. Janghowon’s peculiarity was that it made, at the outset, a twin village sharing the rhythm of everyday life with Joongdong, Jangdae and Masanri on the other side of the river. Even though the nation-wide rearrangement of counties and myons in 1914 - a colonial tactics to institute a spatial order in lieu of placeness - turned out to instigate regional growth through town rivalry at the cost of topophilia, the lingering collective memory of twin town has served as a single most significant therapeutic reliance for local fraternity, companionship and consolidation.