The purpose of this study is to investigate the changes of architectural characteristics of the rural houses in Jeju area for the last half a century. 72 houses in eight villages, which have been spontaneously renovated or added, were chosen as the rersearch samples. The subjects were classified into three groups-traditional, modernized, and contemporary houses-mainly by their construction years. Based upon these classification, the factors of change and continuation in building layout and spatial composition of dwellings have been investigated. As the results, Jeju rural houses show the tendency of the various and rapid changes in overall shape and spatial composition, but the traditional concepts of composition in plan has been maintained. Especially, the open structure of three-folded houses and the utilization of traditional floor system have been maintained as major design concepts to compose a house.