The former Yuyu Pharma plant in Anyang, designed by architect Kim Chung-up, is set to become a national heritage property.
The Korea Heritage Service said on the 12th that it has given advance notice of the listing of the former Yuyu Pharma Anyang plant — comprising the factory building, the research building and the guardhouse — as a State-Registered Cultural Heritage.
The complex, a pharmaceutical industrial facility built in the late 1950s, combined functions ranging from raw material intake to production and research. Officials said it carries significant social and architectural value as a mixed-use industrial site created by Kim Chung-up, one of Korea's leading architects.
The factory building, completed in 1960, retains much of its original exterior design, including a two-story facade emphasizing horizontality, skylights for interior lighting and a sculptural piece installed at the outer corner of the second floor. The research building, built in 1959, preserves the basic spatial layout and framework of the former laboratory. It also shows hallmarks of Kim's early work, such as five columns and beam structures projecting beyond the north and south exterior walls, a canopy supported by twin Y-shaped columns — the symbol of Yuyu Pharma — and protruding window frames.
The guardhouse, built in 1958, retains its cylindrical form offering a 360-degree view, and its raised first floor, external stairway and roofline demonstrate notable sculptural quality.
The Korea Heritage Service on the same day also gave advance notice of listings for Gwangju Theater, the former Daejeon Public Hall and the Japanese colonial-era aircraft hangars at Alddreu Airfield in Moseulpo, Jeju, each as State-Registered Cultural Heritage.
Gwangju Theater opened in 1935, established by a corporation funded with Korean capital. A cultural venue created for Koreans during Japanese colonial rule, it still serves residents of the Gwangju area today and is rare as the only single-screen theater remaining in the country.
The former Daejeon Public Hall was built as a public hall and South Chungcheong Industrial Promotion Center — Daejeon's first urban planning facility — during the 1930s, when the provincial government offices relocated and Daejeon was elevated from a town (eup) to a city (bu). It is the only colonial-era public hall building remaining in a provincial area and holds considerable architectural value for illustrating modernist trends of the period, applying the reinforced concrete structure that spread in the 1930s. The Korea Heritage Service said the advance notice was given on the condition that the building be restored to its original form.
The agency also renamed the previously listed Nam-Jeju aircraft hangars — which bear the scars of forced labor used to build the hangar cluster around Alddreu Airfield during colonial rule — as the Japanese colonial-era aircraft hangars at Alddreu Airfield in Moseulpo, Jeju, and gave advance notice of adding eight hangars to the 10 already registered. The agency said the change was made because the hangars are physical evidence that Jeju Special Self-Governing Province was being developed as a fighter launch base for the Japanese military, and to make clear the site's character and history as a wartime military facility from the colonial period.
The Korea Heritage Service will post the advance notices for 30 days to gather public comment, after which the properties will be finally listed as State-Registered Cultural Heritage following deliberation by the Cultural Heritage Committee.