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Gunsan is well preserving the traces of the modern history of Korea to the extent that the whole city can be called a “museum of modern culture.” Every nook and cranny of Gunsan shows the heritage left in the Japanese colonial period (1910–1945), almost 80 years after the regaining of national independence. One such example is Japanese-style House in Sinheung-dong. The Japanese people who accumulated wealth from rice they plundered created residential complex in Wolmyeong-dong, Sinheung-dong, Geum-dong, Yeonghwa-dong, and Jangmi-dong in Gunsan. In 1925, Hirotsu Kichisaburo (1878–1949), a rice dealer and landowner, built a two-storied traditional Japanese wooden house, which looked like a high-class house of a samurai. It has architectural significance as its roof, exterior wall finishing, interior, and Japanese garden retain the original features. The core wall is finished with wooden feather board wall and plastered wall. The foundation stone is laid upon the stylobate made from natural stones, upon which stood the slender square pillars. Its Dutch gable roof is tiled. On each side of the hallway inside the door, there are the Japanese-style tatami room, kitchen, dining room, and bathroom. Beside the ondol (floor-heated) room is a hallway connected to the outside in the middle of which the stairway to the second floor is located. The tip of the hallway branches off into two ways, one to the living room and the other to the kitchen in the main building. The garden is a typical Japanese-style one with a large stone lamp. There are three entrances. When you go into the one that leads to the main building, you can follow a U-shaped path flanked by the walls, built after the wartime hidden-style structure of a samurai’s house during the Sengoku period. One of the other two entrances is linked to the auxiliary quarters while the other is the one exclusively used by Hirotshu. After Korea regained independence in 1945, the Japanese-style House in Sinheung-dong became the home of the family of Yi Yong-gu (1914–1993), the founder of Honam Flour Mills. The house was opened to the public in 2005, following its listing as a National Registered Cultural Heritage, and has been managed by Gunsan-si Office. As its original structure is preserved intact, it has become a filming site for many films, such as General's Son, Tazza, Fighter in the Wind, Nameless Gangster: Rules of the Time, and Gabi. The Japanese-style House in Sinheung-dong accordingly became a tourist destination, high-quality cultural heritage frequented by a great number of everyday visitors.

In Gunsan, a city of gourmets and good restaurants, there is Leesungdang, a nationwide-popular bakery. Opened around 1910, Leesungdang is a bakery that represents Gunsan and the oldest bakery in Korea. Its name was originally “Izmoya.” Hirose Yastaro, a Japanese man, opened the bakery at the time and named it after his hometown. Izmoya was famous for cracker called “arare,” which was made of glutinous rice pounded in the mortar and added with shrimp. Besides, it sold Japanese traditional refreshments, such as mochi and wagashi. Laker, the two sons of Hirose started to make bread with new machines and techniques after they had learned baking in Tokyo, which made their bakery prosper. Expanded, Izmoya Bakery had a residential quarter, factory, and dormitory for workers. On one side of the bakery on the first floor, there were also a restaurant and coffee shop. The number of workers was almost 20, all people of Joseon. When Korea regained independence in 1945, the family of Hirose went back to Japan. The bakery was taken over by Lee Seok-woo, who named it Leesungdang to mean a “bakery where the Lee’s family make bread.” Afterward, Lee’s descendants have been operating the bakery for almost 80 years. Its representative items are sweet red-bean bun and vegetable bread. The sweet red-bean bun is filled with sweet and savory red bean paste. The vegetable bread is baked with vegetable stuff mainly made with cabbage, tasting clean because it is not fried like croquettes. On the weekend, Leesungdang is crowded with tourists and about 10,000 sweet red-bean buns are sold. People come to this place to enjoy the taste that survived the history of 100 years.

Gunsan has a great number of painful traces of the Japanese colonial period. After it forcedly opened the Gunsan Port in 1899, the Japanese Empire took Gunsan as its foothold for plundering rice from Honam region. About one-fourth of rice that was taken from Korea was shipped from Gunsan to Japan. The Gunsan Museum of History of the Japanese Colonial Period is where you can take a glimpse into the history of exploitation and people’s lives in Gunsan of the time. The exhibition hall on the third floor holds different exhibitions, providing diverse materials that illustrates the aspects of life of old days. Gunsan, the Memory of Exploitation shows the materials related to the Japanese plunder of rice during the Japanese colonial period, such as the delivery order and the booklet of estimating rice production in Gunsan, as well as more than 300 rare materials that depict how Gunsan looked like in those old days, including the panoramic map of Gunsan Port until the 1930s and the history of Gunsan Port opening. 1930 Gunsan Store shows the materials that demonstrate the industry and life in Gunsan during the Japanese colonial period, such as the postcard of Minakai Department Store Gunsan Branch and the Map of Gunsan with Lot Numbers with place names and 67 stores in Gunsanbu in 1935. Resistance and Treachery in Writings and Pictures is the first exhibition to display more than 50 paintings and calligraphies, including the autographs of the late Maecheon Hwang Hyeon, who took his own life in rage of losing the country to Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910, the calligraph of Oh Se-chang, one of 33 Korean leaders who declared independence, the letter and eight-panel folding screen painted with the painting Ilsaengdo by Choi Ik-hyeon, a patriotic martyr who was killed after being sent to Daemado Island, and an eight-panel folding screen of Lee Bang-ja. Visit the Gunsan Museum of History of the Japanese Colonial Period, a storage of memories, to learn the history of Gunsan that has been hidden to us and create the future of the Republic of Korea based on what you learned from the exploitive history during the Japanese colonial period.