open: Tuesday~Sunday, 9a.m.~6p.m.
fee: free
English commentator : https://yeyak.seoul.go.kr/web/reservation/selectReservView.do?rsv_svc_id=S210707104240319583
Contact us: Dilkusha Information Room (070-4126-8853)
Address: 17, Sajik-ro 2-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul
How to go: 10min from Exit 3 of Doklipmun Gate Station
In 1923, during the Japanese colonial period, American Albert Taylor and British Mary Taylor, who worked as mining entrepreneurs and temporary correspondent for the Associated Press, took a walk along the walls of Inwangsan Mountain It is a house built of red bricks under a large ginkgo tree that I met.
Originally, it was the site of the house of Kwon Yul, the master of the Imjin War, and there is a sign stone called General Kwon Yul's house in front of the ginkgo tree designated as a protected tree.
Dilkusha, the name of the house, means "delighted heart" in Persian.
The Taylors built a two-story house with a fireplace and engraved Psalm 127 verse 1 saying, "If the LORD does not build a house, the trouble of the house builders will be in vain, and if the LORD does not keep the castle, the watchman's awake will be in vain."
On February 28, 1919, the Taylor's son Bruce was born at Severance Hospital a day before the March 1 Independence Movement, and Albert hid the Declaration of Independence hidden in Mary Taylor's bed in the back of his brother Bill Taylor's shoes to publicize it abroad.
One day in 1940, Bruce left Dilkusha to join the U.S. Army, and Albert was imprisoned as a citizen of the enemy country for about five months in 1941 when the Pacific War broke out between the U.S. and the Japanese Empire, and Mary was placed under house arrest in Dilkusha. In 1942, Japan ordered the deportation of foreigners, and after the Taylor's departure, Dilkusha was inhabited by homeless people.
In the fall of 1948, Mary Taylor, who lived in California, suddenly died of a heart attack, and she came to Korea with the help of Father Hunt and Underwood's family to bury her ashes on Korean soil and buried Albert Dilkusha in Yanghwajin Foreign Mission Cemetery.
Dilkusha, who managed to escape destruction despite the Korean War that broke out in 1950, is trapped in a forest of buildings as Seoul develops into a center of economic growth. Since then, the name "Dilkusha" has been forgotten and has been called "Red Brick House," "Western People's House," "Ginkgo Tree House," and even "Ghost House," and more than 16 families once lived in Dilkusha.
In 2006, 66 years after leaving dilkusha, Bruce Taylor visited dilkusha with his wife Joyce and daughter Jennifer.
Bruce, who left there to join the army, returned as an 87-year-old man, the last visit to Dilcusha in his life.
On February 28, 2016, on the day of Bruce's seventy-seven birthday, if he had been alive, his daughter Jennifer brought a pouch containing the ashes of Bruce, who died in 2015, and sprinkled it on Dilcusha.
In August 2017, it was designated as National Registered Cultural Property No. 687.
The Dilkusha Exhibition Hall, which opened from March 1, 2021, reproduced the existing living rooms on the first and second floors of the interior when the Taylor couple lived, and the rest of the space consists of six exhibition rooms that shed light on the Taylor family's life in Korea and Taylor's media activities.
