Station (1925), and the Seoul City Hall (1926). Materials for building construction in Korea were in short supply. The Korean old-growth forests and particularly large cypress logs were under Japanese logging operations and shipped to Japan, along with other exportable building materials. The Japanese occupation blocked 20th century Western design movements, including Art Deco and Modernist architecture, from reaching Colonial Korea. Korean architecture with 20th-century influences did not develop until after Korean independence in 1946. Modern architecture Post-war period and Korean War architecture After the Surrender of Japan in 1945, American architecture assumed supremacy. Under Douglas MacArthur, who set Korean domestic and political policy from the Supreme Command of the Allied Powers headquarters in Tokyo. Korean architecture by Koreans began once again in domestic areas, with extensive repair of the missionary churches being given priority funding. Essential repair to infrastructure followed, more patch-work than new projects, and block-built hospitals, schools, industries began simple construction under military supervision. Seoul had survived much of World War II but during the Korean War (1950–1953), many buildings were destroyed, with the city changing command between North Korean and South Korean powers five times. Street-to-street fighting and artillery barrages levelled much of the city, as well as the bridges over the Han River. Important architectural sites were overrun and burnt by invading armies, looting was extensive, and the urban landscape suffered with little money for repairs. With the armistice, and distinct architectural styles determined by foreign governments began a long period of development. In the north, Stalinist and absolutist, often brutalist architecture, was championed. North Korean architects studied in Moscow or Soviet satellites, and brought back socialist worker styles and huge celebratory people's architecture on a grand and massively impressive scale. City-dwellers and bureaucrats lived in Soviet-style apartment blocks, farmers and rural workers lived in traditional houses as they always had; urbanization did not occur until fairly recently. Grand buildings and huge public squares were developed in Pyongyang as architectural showpieces. Formal processional landscapes accompanied these sites. Nearly all architecture was government sponsored, and maintained great homogeneity of function and style. In the south, American models defined all new Korean buildings of any importance, with domestic architecture both civil and rural keeping to traditional buildings, building techniques, and using local materials, and local vernacular styles. The pragmatic need to rebuild a country devastated by genocide, then a civil war, led to ad hoc buildings with