Modular homes in South Korea have historically been targeted to the premium end of the marketplace, making the homes a niche market. Namuro Homes sees a much larger mainstream opportunity and is appealing to it with a new home—TORY (meaning small, yet robust)—that offers greater value without sacrificing looks or features.

Developed with input from Canada Wood, the TORY home cuts costs by using a 2×6 framework rather than the heavy timber typically used for modular homes. Cladding is premium B.C. cedar, with high-quality doors, windows and interior finishing rounding out the homes. The result is a product that cuts costs, but not quality.

Photo: Younglim

Multi-family housing technology has gained attention in Korea as developers seek to improve the efficiency of their existing building portfolios and meet the growing demand for urban housing; however, until recently, barriers to wood use in multi-family housing construction had effectively blocked its uptake.

For the past 30 years, floor impact noise in multi-family wood frame houses in Korea has been evaluated using the “(big) bang machine”. The impact force of this tire drop machine is well above the range of typical impact forces found in residential housing and the testing method had long been criticized by the Korean wood construction industry.

In August 2022, years of technical work and submissions by Canada Wood and industry researchers paid dividends when Korean authorities announced that the impact ball—an alternative acoustic test that allows lighter wood-frame floor assemblies to meet performance requirements for sound mitigation—was replacing the bang machine.

Combined with earlier revisions to the Korea Design Standards that abolished total floor area and height limits for wood buildings, the new sound regulations are a game changer for the use of both light timber and mass timber construction in South Korea’s multi-family housing market.

Performance testing of shear wall at the National Institute of Forest Science  | Photo: Canada Wood Korea

The old saying that “mighty oak trees from tiny acorns grow” is definitely true in the case of the Dotori (acorn) kindergarten. Built as the first-ever Canadian Super E® public building in South Korea, the facility has achieved a number of milestones. First, it shows the market that a high degree of energy efficiency through wood-frame construction is possible; second, that local firms have the expertise to build to the high standards required by energy efficient systems like Super E®; and third, that the pre-fabrication used for much of the structure is an efficient construction approach in South Korea. Framing the building from pre-fabricated components took only five days—an incredibly fast timeline that has caught the attention of developers and builders. The little acorn planted with Dotori may soon flourish into much broader use of Super E®.

Originally developed by Natural Resources Canada, Super E® housing is a high-performance building methodology focusing on how a building must perform, rather than how it is built. This building system responds to Korea’s need for healthy, energy-efficient construction and is now delivered through the Korea Wood Construction Association with support by Canada Wood.

Photo: Professor Tae Woong KANG at Dankook Universitye

Led by BC Wood, efforts to boost sales of B.C. value-added wood products in South Korea are succeeding through targeting niche markets within larger market segments (such as secondary homes within the larger home construction sector). This approach maximizes the value of the marketing effort by reaching out to targeted individual buyers and developers.

Niche sectors now being developed in South Korea include:

• 2×4 house packages,
• coastal species and glulam for traditional Korean “Hanok” housing,
• log and timber frame construction,
• engineered wood products,
• and finishing materials and cabinetry for high-end wood-frame construction and resort developments.

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Hammer Sound | Photo: Park YoungChae