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Gongdeok Station (공덕역) Line 5 – Station #529, Line 6 – Station #626, AREX – Station #A02

January 29, 2012

If someone were to blindfold you and then drop you off at the intersection above Gongdeok Station, you could be forgiven for thinking you were in Gangnam and not Mapo-gu. The neighborhood is starkly different from the much more modest nearby areas of Aeogae and Daeheung – massively more developed, a forest of brand new steel and glass towers with streams of heavy traffic moving along the wide avenues below them. It’s clear that Gongdeok has seen a lot of change, and seen it fast, and having recently been linked to the AREX line that runs from Seoul Station to Incheon Airport, it’s likely to see more.

The AREX expansion is still new enough that the entrances accessing it and the surrounding plaza haven’t yet been completed, as I saw after stepping out of Exit 8, where white metal fencing and piles of dirt show signs of a work still in progress. Just past those, however, things are spic and span, Mapo-ro (마포로) lined with sparkling new buildings housing banks, restaurants, and cafes on their first floors. It’s more of the same along Baekbeom-ro (백범로) from Exit 7: tall modern structures, in front of several of which are the sorts of sculptures commissioned by corporate groups. There’s a big blue man like glued together lollipops holding a glowing white orb, and metal stick figures running up a silver arc towards vertical.

In the area framed by these two avenues the neighborhood lets its hair down a bit, and a number of restaurants, bars, and small shops sit invitingly on some small streets paved with stone.

Kiddy-corner from that, I found things to be exceptionally residential. Just outside of Exit 2 is the tower of the Lotte City Hotel, sequined eggs out front, and behind it, via Exit 2 or 3, the neighborhood is 100% apartment towers and their trappings: convenience stores, bakeries, real estate offices, and a few hagwons.

But if there’s one thing that residents of Seoul have come to know it’s that not even the most modern and sterile neighborhoods are without their traces of grime or stubborn remainders from a rougher and not all that remote past.

Take a bus (or a walk) along Sogang-ro (서강로) west of the station on any given night, and you’ll see a sidewalk flooded in a pulp magazine shade of pink where a strip of hostess bars line up, especially on the south side of the avenue, nearest Exit 1. I’d seen these several times before, but always from late night bus windows; this was the first time I’d walked past them. Up close, they seemed curiously shrunken, as if employees and clients alike were two-thirds size. The front of each establishment was only about three meters wide, and the doors were exactly my height or an inch or two shorter. Most of them had peepholes. Facades were usually painted in one solid color, doors in another, and almost all of the establishments used an old-fashioned font resembling hand-drawn brushstrokes on their signs. It almost goes without saying that none of the bars had windows.

The hostess bars front a thin strip, a half block wide, of old, slightly beat-up, tile-roofed buildings that reminded me of similar scenes I’ve come across in the more industrial parts of Yeongdeungpo and elsewhere. Where was the money that was so proudly on display elsewhere around Gongdeok?

Compounding the incongruity was the fact that just behind this humble row a new park was going in. It was just a thin strip of concrete walking path between saplings, but I’d seen something similar near Daeheung Station, and my guess was that the two, and possibly more, would connect in a ribbon of park running above the extension of the Jungang Line, going in underground. Much development is left, however – dump trucks sat around idly and the exercise equipment placed at a bulge in the walking path was still wrapped in protective blue plastic.

For a bigger look at what Gongdeok was probably like a few years ago, pop out Exit 5 and head to Gongdeok Market (공덕시장) by heading straight on Mallijae-gil (만리재길) and veering to the left onto Mallijaeyet-gil (만리재옛길). A block up on the left is the market, as old school as you like. Its main alley runs parallel to the street, squeezed between two old three-story brick buildings that have tufts of grass and weeds growing out of cracks in their sides and roofs.

Along the outside alley were vegetable sellers and piles of shoes and butchers whose cuts of meat were illuminated with the same pink lights as the hostess bars a couple blocks away. The market continued in dimly lit stalls occupying the first floor of the building between the alley and Mallijaeyet-gil, a low-roofed, cramped place that brought to mind Guro Market (구로시장) near Namguro Station. Many of the stalls were closed on a Sunday, but some potent-smelling lunch booths were open and manned by wizened ajummas, though at least one of them had snuck away to a noraebang, judging by the wail pouring from a second-story window.

I’d heard of the Gongdeok neighborhood being well-known for a couple of foods, so one of my main goals on this visit was to try them out. Fortunately for the serial-eater, the places for both of these are right next to each other, occupying the outer edge of the market and are the first and second things you see on your way there from the station.

As soon as you arrive at the market you’ll notice several signs advertising places for jokbal (족발), or pork trotters. The most prominent of these, and the one my companion and I ate at, is Gungjung Jokbal (궁중족발), which doesn’t appear all that big from the street, but once you step inside the market alley reveals itself to be spread over about a half-dozen rooms, as if it’s metastasized. Every single one of these was boisterous and packed when I visited, as any good jokbal place should be. Jokbal is maybe one of the world’s least pretentious eating experiences, and every time I have it I feel as if I really should have just finished working at the docks and should now be telling loud off-color jokes. My longshoreman fantasy was graciously aided by the fact that a minute after we were seated two guys pulled up chairs at the table next to us, one of whom had the most beautiful Korean mullet I’d ever seen. Less than ten minutes later they were already on their second bottle of soju. Keep up the good work, men.

Gungjung Jokbal’s popularity probably owed quite a bit to its generosity. Along with a liberal portion of jokbal, the joint provides both a plate of sundae (순대) (blood sausage) and sundae-guk (순대국) (sundae soup) free of charge. This sounds wonderful in the abstract, but in practice, splitting all that nasty bit pork between two people can feel like you’re eating your way towards your own death. My advice? Don’t go with less than four people. Which is not to say that it wasn’t all delicious. It was. I was just ready to sign myself into the nearest cardiac hospital by the time I was done.

Slightly less heart attack-inducing is what’s referred to as Twikim Alley, just next to the jokbal places. First of all, this is a total misnomer. This isn’t a row of restaurants specializing in one food, like Tteokbokki Town in Sindang or the bindaetteok stalls in Gwangjang Market in Jongno-5-ga. It’s two big twikim restaurants next to each other, though prices here are a bit cheaper than in other parts of town.

The two restaurants, Cheonghakdong (청학동) and Mapo Grandma Bindaetteok (마포할머니빈대떡) sit on either side of a market alley and are each fronted by a long table piled with dozens of varieties of twikim, battered and fried snacks similar to tempura. There are the standard varieties you see at any old tent restaurant – vegetable, potato, squid – but also more exotic fare like hot peppers, sesame leaves, and octopus rings…just about anything you could batter and deep fry. The selection did not, however, extend to deep-fried Oreos or butter. America – still undisputed deep-frying champion. U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

Like Gungjung, Grandma’s spreads out through a warren of first floor rooms, but Cheonghakdong, where we ate, mostly takes up a large second floor dining room. After loading up a tray Dunkin’ Donuts-style we handed it over to the woman working there and went upstairs to sit down while our twikim was fried up.

When our food came, along with a grease-splattered receipt, it was served with dongchimi (동치미), a light, slightly sour soup; two kinds of kimchi for cutting through the grease; and soy sauce with slices of onions for dipping the twikim in. Comforting, filling, and warm. Order up a bottle of makkeolli and you’ve got all you need to get yourself through the winter.

Gongdeok Market (공덕시장)

Exit 5

Straight on Mallijae-gil (만리재길) to Mallijaeyet-gil (만리재옛길)

Gungjung Jokbal (궁중족발)

Exit 5

In Gongdeok Market

02) 718-7087

Cheonghakdong (청학동)

Exit 5

In Gongdeok Market

02) 706-0603

Mapo Grandma Bindaetteok (마포할머니빈대떡)

Exit 5

In Gongdeok Market

www.빈대떡.net

02) 715-3775

Tags:AREX, Line 5, Line 6, Mapo-gu, market, park, restaurant
Posted in AREX, Line 5, Line 6, Mapo-gu | 6 Comments »

Aeogae Station (애오개역) Line 5 – Station #530

January 15, 2012

Aeogae sits just south of Ahyeon and Chungjeongno, north of Gongdeok, east of Ewha, and about a kilometer west of Seoul Station, and despite being surrounded by these fairly popular and busy neighborhoods, Aeogae had always been one of those blank spots for me, a spot on the map about which I had no idea. This, combined with the fact that it’s not all that far from where both Liz and I live, left me rather intrigued to visit when the station’s number came up recently.

The neighborhood around the station lies in a valley between ridges to the east and west, centered on Mapo-daero (마포대로), which links Gongdeok and Chungjeongno. The reason I hadn’t heard much about the place before is that there simply isn’t all that much of note in the area; it’s mostly a typical residential-commercial mix.

There were a few small restaurants, pubs, and real estate offices outside of Exit 1, with newer apartment towers further ahead; things generally getting newer and nicer as one moves south towards Gongdeok. After a couple blocks it’s basically just apartment complexes on this side of the street. In fact, the most notable thing is apartment complexes to be. About a half-block back of Mapo-daero there’s an enormous area that’s been emptied out and is now just a dirt expanse but will eventually be turned into a Prugio development. The site covers several square blocks, and its sheer size and the heavy-duty trucks parked on ramps cut into the dirt slopes vaguely reminded me of open-pit mining sites. On the opposite side some older houses perched at the top of a hill.

Given Aeogae’s location it’s not surprising that this type of development is occurring. As I walked through the east side of the neighborhood it seemed quite quiet at first, without much going on. There were a lot of small businesses, but most were closed, and only a few, single people here and there were walking about. Eventually, though, I stumbled upon two more large development sites where fencing surrounded vast expanses of dirt. One, where a pair of backhoes were going at it, was bound to be a screen golf facility; the other was on its way to becoming apartments.

This latter site, which was just outside of Exit 3, had dump trucks entering and exiting through a gate constructed just a few dozen meters from the station, and, like the site opposite, ended at a ridge topped by red brick homes. Just before those, on a small rise barely big enough to contain it, stood alone building, three or four stories tall, half of it intact, half of it falling apart, looking like something airlifted out of a horror film.

It was obvious that Aeogae would look very different five years from now, and it probably looked very different five years ago as well. Just steps beyond this third major construction site was a neighborhood that I first took to be abandoned. The homes here were old and desiccated, and many of them had refuse of all sorts just tossed onto their roofs and into the spaces between homes. There were no signs of life, and just as I was about to come to the conclusion that the entire area had been vacated I noticed a single bare light bulb shining through an open window. A minute after that I caught snippets of a conversation between two men that drifted outside from one of the buildings, and watched an old woman step out into the alley to fetch a bucket.

Now it wasn’t clear just what the status of the place was. Some of the homes had clearly been deserted and many buildings had official signs on them that read 공가 (abandoned building), yet there were apparently some people still sticking things out in this incredibly down and out neighborhood. The black cat that was curled up on one of the roofs, surveying the scene, seemed to know much more than I did.

Aeogae does have one more particularly unexpected trick up its sleeve. A short walk from Exit 4 and left on Mapo-daero-18-gil (마포대로18길) is St. Nicholas Orthodox Church (한국정교회), the only Russian Orthodox church in Seoul. Although not that big, the church’s oxidized copper-green dome and matching cross are easily noticeable from the street thanks to the fact that it sits atop a small promontory. I walked up the steep side street toward its old white sign, the paint chipping, and then followed the street to the right as it curved around the church. In the back was a small gray gate that led into a courtyard and then to the church on its opposite side.

Inside, the church was quiet and unlit, save for a few candles. Some daylight seeped in through the windows, but the day outside was overcast and gray and the interior remained dim. No one else was there.

I was raised Catholic, but this was the first time I’d ever been in an Orthodox church, and the result was an odd sense of double displacement. For one thing, it was clearly and recognizably Christian – I was well familiar with most of the angels and saints depicted on the bright paintings that covered the underside of the dome and many of the walls – but plainly of a different tradition. Instead of an open apse with an altar, there was a sanctuary closed off by an iconostasis, an elaborately carved wooden screen, with each segment bearing the gilded visage of an important figure: Jesus, Mary, St. Nicholas, the angel Gabriel. There was also a central dome, and below it hung the horos, a chandelier-like structure with images of saints and angels. It felt vaguely familiar, yet still strange, like meeting a second cousin: you’re aware that there’s a fundamental connection, but, really, you’ve got no idea who this guy is.

The other displacement was geographical. Although I’d noticed nothing in the neighborhood to indicate a Russian or Slavic or Greek population, inside the church it felt like Eastern Europe: the stern-faced, bearded white men in the paintings; the intricate woodwork of the pulpit and priest’s throne, so unlike the clean, modern style that Korean churches favor; the simple sensation of stillness. The only thing that suggested that I was still in Korea was the hangeul that appeared here and there.

I walked up the stairs to the balcony in the rear, to get a view of the church’s interior from above, and I could vaguely make out the pounding of construction equipment coming from somewhere nearby. From the balcony I could get a better view of the painting occupying the underside of the dome as well as the lower half of the one partly obscured by the wooden iconostasis in the bema.

As I stepped back out onto the stairwell to descend the steps I noticed a package, tied up with twine, with a Russian address written on it in Cyrillic. Taped to the top of the box was a typed-out list of the contents, in English and Korean, that read like the label you’d find on a box on the floor in God’s basement just after He’d moved:

Prayer Book

Introduction of Orthodox Church

Noah’s Ark

The Tower of Babel

Birth of Jesus Christ

St. Nicholas Orthodox Church (한국정교회)

Exit 4

Left on Mapo-daero-18-gil (마포대로18길)

Tags:abandoned buildings, church, Line 5
Posted in Line 5, Mapo-gu | 5 Comments »

Jongno-3-ga Station (종로3가역) Line 1 – Station #130, Line 3 – Station #329, Line 5 – Station #534

January 1, 2012

If there’s one station that can be said to be the center of Seoul’s subway system, the nexus from which everything expands and to which it returns, it’s Jongno-3-ga. One of the system’s oldest stations, it’s also one of the few that connect more than two lines, and it sits right in the heart of the city, steps from tourist attractions, historical sites, and a smuggler’s den assortment of markets and specialty shopping areas. There’s an immense amount of things to see and do here, so without further ado…

Let’s start at Exit 1, where you can join the tourists streaming down Jongno (종로) on their way to Insadong. You’ll first pass by Tapgol Park (탑골공원), Seoul’s very first modern public park, opened in 1920 and built around Wongaksa Pagoda, a 10-story stone pagoda that’s listed as National Treasure No. 2.

Tapgol Park also played an important role in the history of Korea’s independence struggle, as it was here that Korea’s Declaration of Independence was publicly read for the first time, by a college student named Chung Jae-yong on March 1, 1919. A number of monuments within the park commemorate this heritage.

On the sidewalk outside the park’s western wall a dozen or so fortune tellers line up one after the other, offering saju or tarot card readings for 3,000 won, as well as face and palm readings. The fortune tellers each sit in a small tent. As the sun goes down and dusk arrives, bare fluorescent bulbs light the shacks from within, the glow spilling onto the darkened sidewalk as from lanterns, but the drawn plastic curtains maintain a veil of secrecy about the fates being divulged on their other sides.

Cross the intersection to the sidewalk opposite the fortune tellers and turn right to head up Insadong-gil (인사동길). Almost immediately there will be an alley on your left below a sign reading 피맛골 주점촌 (Pimatgol Pub Town). This is, or, rather, what’s left of Pimatgol (피맛골). Most people know the story behind the creation of Pimatgol, but it bears a brief repeating since it’s one of the most enduring, and winning, stories in Korean popular history.

As it is now, during the Joseon Dynasty Jongno was Seoul’s main street and was where the nobility and government officials would pass, requiring any commoners on the street to prostrate themselves when they did. To avoid this inconvenience citizens would use Pimatgol (‘avoiding horses alley’) to move back and forth unharassed.

Alas, like so many other places, the alley fell victim to urban development, beginning in the 1980s. Further west it’s essentially been eviscerated, replaced with high rise towers, but even here, although it’s still a narrow alley and there are a number of small restaurants and drinking establishments, as the sign notes, much of the character is gone.

On one side street, opposite the large 인사동코리아 gift shop and just a stone’s toss north of Pimatgol, is an easy to miss brown sign that points the way to Seungdong Church (승동교회), one of Korea’s earliest Presbyterian churches. Significant for its role in Christianity’s development in the country, this red brick Romanesque church is even more notable for the role it played in the development of the country’s independence. The night before the March 1^st reading in Tapgol Park, it was here, in the basement meeting hall, that student leaders met to discuss the next day’s actions.

The sidewalks at the lower end of Insadong (인사동) are crowded with carts selling everything from yeot to incense to clothes, from beondaeggi to jade jewelry to handmade journals. You’ll even find one stall where you can buy North Korean won as a souvenir.

Insadong-gil (인사동길) and the neighborhood surrounding it is filled with galleries, cafes, tea shops, and places for tourists to buy souvenirs, which run the gamut from schlocky t-shirts and trinkets to fine pieces of pottery and lacquerware. Despite Insadong being tourist central, it’s one of few such places where I don’t find the mass of visitors bothersome and the neighborhood best avoided. I actually like going there, and from conversations I’ve had with locals their general feeling is similar. Why is this so? Some of it stems, I believe, from the fact that Seoul just isn’t a tourist town the way other capital cities are, and so the tourists it does get are fewer in number and generally not of the rush-around-with-a-camera-and-act-obnoxious variety. Another key factor is that Insadong’s current character isn’t much of a departure from how it was in the past, with its long history as a center of the antique trade and its postwar status as the focal point of Korea’s artistic and café culture.

But the main reason I think that Insadong has weathered its emergence as a tourist district remarkably well is that it doesn’t cater to tourists at the exclusion of locals. Despite some pretty pathetic stabs at tradition, like hangeulized Starbucks and Olive Young signs, and the commercialization of tradition (Show me a culture that doesn’t do that, though, or a part of Seoul that isn’t commercialized.) it doesn’t feel like authenticity has been sacrificed too much in the process (though the thought occurs to me that it may feel this way because traditional Seoul has been so thoroughly sacrificed nearly everywhere else). The alleys just off Insadong-gil are filled with tea shops and restaurants that recall an earlier Korea in their wood-beamed architecture, devotion to traditional food and drink, and ambience that recalls a time before the country’s economic and tech boom. And unlike in so many tourist districts the food and drink here are actually quite good, which is why you’ll often find them crowded with locals while the tourist surge carries on just a few feet away. It’s also in some ways still just a local neighborhood, the kind of place where the convenience stores advertise cigarettes and trash bags on their signs, and workers sort through cardboard in a huge recycling yard.

The other major attraction near Jongno-3-ga is Jongmyo (종묘), a short walk from Exit 11. Constructed in 1395 under the direction of King Taejo, founder of the Joseon Dynasty, Jongmyo was built to house the memorial tablets of the dynasty’s deceased kings and queens. (The original structure, though not the memorial tablets, was destroyed by Japanese invaders in 1592. The current structure dates from 1608.) In 1995, its 600^th anniversary, it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Six years later this honor was augmented by the listing of the Jongmyo Jerye (종묘제례), a rite for honoring the spirits of the deceased royalty, and the Jongmyo Jeryeak (종묘제례악), the accompanying court music, as Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. The Jongmyo Jerye is performed annually on the first Sunday in May and is open to the public.

The shrine and surrounding grounds are remarkably peaceful compared to their contemporary surroundings. Dirt paths wind between patches of trees and small ponds, and you can hear birds chirping in the treetops. The atmosphere is matched by the lovely but austere buildings, which have none of the colorful and intricate ornamentation found on other royal structures. Buildings here are simple in structure and hew to a consistent burgundy and mint color scheme, a nod to the solemnity of their purpose. On Jongmyo’s main paths runs a raised, three-part stone walkway, the outer lanes reserved for the king and crown prince, the central one for the spirits.

Tablets of kings at Jongmyo (only two kings’ tablets are not enshrined here), are grouped together with their wife (or wives). An auxiliary hall called Yeongnyeongjeon (영녕전) (Hall of Eternal Comfort) holds the memorial tablets of Taejo’s ancestors and some lesser Joseon kings and queens, but the majority reside in Jeongjeon (정전), the main hall, a long one-story wooden building with a sloped black tile roof as tall as the story below it. Jeongjeon is divided into 19 rooms, one for each king enshrined there. Memorial tablets of 30 Joseon queens can also be found in Jeongjeon, together with the king they were married to. When a king or queen died the mourning period would continue for three years. The exterior of each room is absolutely identical – a door of vertical wooden slats punctuated by circular iron bolts – with the single exception of the central door, which bears a heavy metal lock on its frame. King Sejong’s room is the third from the left.

A wide stone plaza extends in front of Jeongjeon, surrounded by trees. Standing in it the only things you are able to see are the top of N Seoul Tower and the upper reaches of the Boryeong Tower in Jongno-5-ga. These, of course, were not around when the shrine was actively being used and the visual quarantine was meant to prevent worldly matters from intruding on the king’s thoughts as he performed ancestral rites and to preserve the tranquility of the memorial.

To visit Jongmyo you must join a one-hour guided tour – in Korean, English, Chinese, or Japanese – except on Saturdays, when the shrine is open to explore at your leisure.

The park areas on either side of the entrance to Jongmyo are serious oldboy hangouts where dozens of ajeosshis gather to kill time and do ajeosshi things together. West of the entrance hosts a huge congregation of games of, mostly, Go (baduk (바둑) in Korean) but also jangi (장기), Korean chess. It’s a bit like New York’s Washington Square Park’s chess corner on steroids – the day I visited there must have been close to 100 games going on, providing a background clicking as stones are set down so constantly it practically becomes some sort of mantra. As many men as there are playing (and it is exclusively men), there are an equal number watching, some of the more intense games pulling in crowds of ten or twenty.

Other ajeosshis were napping, chatting, or just sitting around. One group had drawn a small target on the pavement in chalk and was taking turns tossing coins at the bull’s-eye like school kids. Still others were practicing calligraphy or speechifying to crowds of fellow oldboys at loudspeakers that had been set up on either side of the park.

Also in the park, near the Jongmyo ticket booth is a statue of 이상재, a religious leader and independence fighter born in 1850.

Walking to Jongmyo from the subway station, your eye will likely be caught by the gleam emitted from the string of jewelry shops that cluster along Jongno, part of the Jongno Jewelry District, which, according to the Korea Tourism Organization encompasses over 1,000 stores in the area. The stores here are popular with locals and tourists alike, and generally offer prices below what you’ll find in other parts of town.

The district also extends into the backstreets, most easily accessible from Exit 8, where there are more jewelers, particularly wholesalers, and a number of gem cutters. All kinds of different stones sit in little trays in the windows, and in their unset state the colorful tabs look like small pieces of rock candy that have been polished to brilliance. Also in the area are a number of shops selling gift boxes, should you be looking for a special package to hold what used to be your paycheck.

One of the most noticeable aspects of the Jongno-3-ga area is that it has approximately the same median age as the shuffleboard courts in Boca Raton. Walking around you’ll frequently hear decades-old songs coming from shops and carts selling CDs and cassettes. That’s a whole lot of antiquatedness, but given the populace it seems oddly right. Just about everyone walking around seems to be over 50, and the vast majority of these are men. What does this mean? Well, it means that Jongno is the best place in Seoul for going tragic outfit-spotting. If Jongno had a coat of arms it would be plaids over stripes and studded with rhinestones. The single worst (or best, depending on your point of view) offender that I spotted was wearing a metallic silver shirt that had a red checked collar with blue and pink teddy bears on it.

This particular party animal, and others of his ilk, was out enjoying himself in the area around Exits 1, 2, and 2-1, which is full of old dudes getting their kicks at the local restaurants, bars, noraebangs, and, yes, love motels. On the left a short walk from Exit 2-1 a number of food stalls are set up in a small plaza that serves more or less as the center of the action. One side of the plaza is bordered by Tapgol Park’s eastern wall, and along this wall dozens of guys eat and drink, often heavily, at the plastic tables and stools that have been set up. Walking around, something about the scene felt a bit off to me, and it wasn’t until I’d been there a while that I realized I’d had similar sensations before, in Cairo and Tangiers. There were virtually no women around; the only ones I could see being those working in the restaurants serving up food and drinks.

Which brings me to my next point. I hereby petition to have Jongno-2-ga (종로2가) officially renamed the Barney Gumbel District, as the rates of alcoholism in this area must be some of the highest in the country. Retired and with nothing better to do, a lot of old men seem to simply spend their time here getting drunk. Several were slumped over those plastic tables or up against the park’s brick wall, empty makkeolli and soju bottles around them. There isn’t the menace in the air that can hang over a large collection of drunk young men, but there is a tinge of aggression; I witnessed one loud argument that nearly devolved into a fistfight. More than anything, I felt the neighborhood gave off a sour, abject air, a picture of how not to grow old.

Perhaps coincidentally, or perhaps not, the homeless are much more visible in the Jongno-3-ga area, and it’s not uncommon to see them sleeping on benches or pieces of cardboard, or shuffling down the sidewalk begging or pushing shopping carts. Seoul’s homelessness problem is insignificant compared to what American or British cities are used to, but that dearth makes their increased presence here, in the heart of the city, all the more jarring.

Just north of the Barney Gumbel District and Tapgol Park is the Nakwon Arcade (낙원상가), a large gray building on columns like stilts so that the traffic on Samil-daero (삼일대로) can pass where its ground floor would otherwise be. You can reach it via Exit 1 by turning right after Tapgol Park and walking past the fortune tellers or more simply by using Exit 5 and taking an immediate right.

Walking in the nearest door, the wail of a soprano drifted down the stairwell from somewhere up above. Covering two floors, the majority of Nakwon is devoted to the Instrument Arcade (낙원악기상가). If you can play it, you can almost certainly find it here, everything from electric guitars to trombones to harps. Some of the shops in the building are jumbled fish-and-finds; others are well-organized with instruments lined up in orderly rows, their wood and brass immaculately polished.

As I wandered through the arcade I caught snippets of people testing out violins, guitars, flutes, and drums. The effect was a bit like walking through a radio dial set to ‘scan.’ Moving through the streets of Seoul isn’t all that different, and as I passed from someone drawing a bow across the strings of a cello to someone else peeling off some riffs on an electric guitar I realized just how rare it is that one isn’t exposed to ambient music in this city, whether it’s music pumping out of a noraebang or cell phone shop or muffled beats seeping out of a subway rider’s headphones.

Besides instruments, there are of course also cases, amplifiers, mic stands, and any other accessory you might need at Nakwon. Rather oddly, however, the one thing it looks like you can’t find here are traditional Korean instruments – no gayageum, no janggu, no piri. It’s certainly possible that I simply missed the stores selling them, but I spent a good while in the arcade and didn’t see a single non-Western instrument. The surrounding streets, however, are home to a number of stores selling these things.

Make your way up to the fourth floor of the arcade and you’ll find Seoul Art Cinema (서울아트시네마). Decorated with lots of old movie posters, the cinema was quite quiet when I happened by, the guy working the snack bar eating dinner and watching TV.

While not as buzzing as your nearest CGV multiplex, Seoul Art Cinema screens movies you won’t be able to see anywhere else, ranging from global cinema to Korean indie flicks to periodic director retrospectives. There’s little English information at the website, but most films are screened with English subtitles. Look for the little circled ‘e’ next to film titles in the ‘Programs’ section.

Finally, in the basement of the Nakwon Arcade, below the Samil-daero traffic, is the Nakwon Market (낙원시장). Everything you’d expect to find in a market is here, but being underground the market experience comes in a more highly concentrated form. Stuffy, dimly lit, and slightly claustrophobic, stalls and merchandise are jammed even closer together, with stacks and stacks of cardboard boxes containing bulk produce sitting behind the stuff for sale, and the minimal ventilation rendered the usual market smells especially pungent.

North of Jongno is where all of the Jongno-3-ga neighborhood’s most well-known sights are, but the south side also offers plenty of interest, and that’s where we’ll be heading next, moving west to east.

Via Exit 15, the intersection around Insadong and and Tapgol Park is full of international chain stores, and yet more line Samil-daero as you follow it south. You’ll also come across the Cine Core building, in front of which are the bronzed handprints of several celebrities set in the sidewalk at the Star’s Handprint Plaza (스타의 광장 핸드프린팅). I didn’t recognize any of the names, but my celebrity IQ is pretty low, so if anyone is familiar with any of them please feel free to leave a note in the comments.

Just a few steps further and you arrive at the Cheonggye Stream (청계천). Not too far from its heavily engineered headwaters near City Hall, its banks are remarkably lush at this point, and willow trees droop over the water. There are of course walking paths on either side, as well as benches and stepping stones that cross the olive-hued water.

Across Cheonggyecheon-ro (청계천로), the street running along the stream’s north side, is a string of small shops, and all around men wearing construction helmets and driving mopeds buzz past, picking up or dropping off merchandise. Typical of the area’s tendency to clump similar businesses together in one area, many of the stores here occupy the same niche – you might call it Disaster Management Street – selling traffic cones, fire extinguishers, alarm bells, emergency exit signs, and flashing red lights.

Strolling up Donhwamun-ro (돈화문로), just before I reached Exit 14 I passed the Seoul Theater (서울극장), one of the oldest movie theaters in town, around since 1964.

When I reached Jongno again I turned east and noticed a pair of science supply shops flanking a small alley between Exits 12 and 13. Their windows were full of beakers, droppers, dials, scales, mortars, pestles, microscopes, and corkscrew tubes. Heading into the alley revealed nearly a dozen more similar stores, on this alley and one running parallel to Jongno – a high school chemistry teacher’s dream. Among the science supply shops were also a number of simple restaurants, which the sign above the ally, reading 종로 먹거리 골목 (Jongno Food Alley), tips you off to. Unsurprisingly, all of the clientele looked to be over 50.

After wandering about in the back alleys and recalling my high school days under the chemistry tutelage of Ms. Swiecki (just about the last time I was any good at anything science-related), I emerged back on Jongno. There, across from Jongmyo was a small plaza called Seun Greenway Park (세운초록띠공원). Not so far from Exit 12, this curious little spot looked like a patch of Jeolla-do farmland had been scooped up and airlifted to downtown Seoul. Along the sidewalk was a swath of gold-green dry rice (벼), the stalks’ heavy tops all bowed over like question marks, and when a breeze blew it would shake them and produce a barely perceptible rattle. Other crops – including broomcorn (기장), millet (조), and sorghum (수수) – were planted in adjacent sections, and between them were a couple scarecrows and an earthen sculpture of two peasants and their ox.

I strolled down the walkway between the crops, brushing my hand against their dried leaves as dozens of dragonflies flitted above, and tried to make up my mind about what I thought of this quixotic little place, tucked between the city’s main avenue and the huge and rather rundown Seun Arcade (세운상가) behind it. What was it doing here and what was the point?

A few signboards at the edge of the park answered those questions. From 2008 to 2009 a few dilapidated old buildings that had previously stood there had been torn down and the park put in their place, with the aim that it would be the first part of a greenbelt that would connect Namsan to Jongmyo. Who was behind this plan? Why, hara-kiri mayor Oh Se-hoon, which means that the greenbelt thing probably ain’t happening, at least not anytime soon.

From the park I continued east to the corner of Changgyeonggun-ro (창경군로) where I swung a right into the watch and clock market that takes shape in the alleys near where Changgyeonggun-ro and the Cheonggye Stream meet. I went past a few small, greasy booths where men doing repairs poked at the innards of watches with tiny little tools, small selections of new watches for sale laid out before them just in case the patient died on the operating table.

Shop walls in the alleys were practically wallpapered with clocks – analog clocks of every shape and design, digital clocks with glowing red numbers (always red), intricately carved cuckoo clocks – like some sort of German rail conductor’s fever dream. I pitied the man who worked here who was ever late for dinner with his wife.

The area between the watch and clock market, the stream, Jongno, and the station is jammed chock-full of electronic shops and walking through it feels as if you’ve been shrunk down and are walking through the innards of some giant machine.

There are of course things identifiable to the lay person – TVs, CD players, microphones, walkie-talkies – but there was also a huge amount of things that I had no clue what they were. All of these oddly shaped pieces with wires and dials…like little plastic and metal magic charms. They had to do amazing and sophisticated things, the sort of things that if I stopped writing to pause and consider how a small bit of pressure from my finger translates into a digital symbol on a glowing screen I would marvel at. Or maybe they just helped make my toast. It was like seeing a thousand puzzle pieces but having no clue what the puzzle looks like or even if they all belonged to the same puzzle or to entirely different ones.

After several minutes of this confusion, I stepped out of the electronic wilderness and back out onto Jongno. Jongmyo’s leafy enclave continued to hold the spirits of Korea’s past in repose, customers walked out of the jewelry stores with shiny new purchases in pretty velvet boxes, and across the street I could see a homeless man napping on a bench. I was left with only one question for myself: Was this city one puzzle, or a thousand?

Tapgol Park (탑골공원)

Exit 1

Straight on Jongno (종로)

Fortune Tellers

Turn right immediately after park

Insadong-gil (인사동길)

Exit 1

Straight on Jongno (종로), cross Samil-daero (삼일대로), right on Insadong-gil (인사동길)

Pimatgol (피맛골)

Exit 1

First alley on left after turning right on Insadong-gil (인사동길)

Seungdong Church (승동교회)

Exit 1

Left at sign on Insadong-gil (인사동길)

Jongmyo (종묘)

Exit 11

Straight on Jongno (종로)

02) 765-0195

Entrance

Age 7 – 18: 500 won, 19 and up: 1,000 won

Hours

Mar – Sep: 9 – 18:00 (last entry 17:00), Oct – Feb: 9 – 17:30 (last entry 16:30); closed Tuesdays

For tour times see website

Jongno Jewelry District

Exit 11 and 12

Nakwon Instrument Arcade (낙원악기상가) and Nakwon Market (낙원시장)

Exit 5

Take an immediate right

www.enakwon.co.kr

Seoul Art Cinema (서울아트시네마)

Exit 5

4^th floor of Nakwon Arcade

www.cinematheque.seoul.kr

Nakwon Market (낙원시장)

Exit 5

Basement of Nakwon Arcade

Cheonggye Stream (청계천)

Exit 13 and 14

South on Donhwamun-ro (동화문로)

Seoul Theater (서울극장)

Exit 14

Turn right out of exit

Science supply shops and Jongno Food Alley (종로 먹거리 골목)

Exit 12 and 13

Turn down the small alley between the exits

Seun Greenway Park (세운초록띠공원)

Exit 12

Straight on Jongno (종로)

Watch and Clock Market

Exit 12

Straight on Jongno (종로), right on Changgyeonggun-ro (창경군로), right into alleys

Electronic Shops

Exit 12

Straight on Jongno (종로), right after Seun Greenway Park

Tags:annual events, art, history, Jongno-gu, Line 1, Line 3, Line 5, market, monument, nightlife, park, restaurant, shopping, temple
Posted in Jongno-gu, Line 1, Line 3, Line 5 | 2 Comments »

Wangsimni Station (왕십리역) Line 2 – Station #208, Line 5 – Station #540, Jungang Line – Station #K116

October 2, 2011

Seoul Sub→urban would like to thank Meagan Mastriani for inviting us to and showing me around her work neighborhood of Wangsimni. Meagan writes about food, mostly, and you can check out her take on the local dining scene at her column, Savoring Seoul, in the online magazine Honest Cooking.

I met Meagan on a recent Sunday outside Exit 9 and, being a bit of a foodie, naturally one of the first places she took me was to a small bakery, Bonnie’s kitchen (바니스), that specializes in cakes and cupcakes.

Hanging a U-turn from the exit and then a right on Wangsimni-gil (왕십리길) brought us to the bakery, which looks like the manifestation of a very domestically-minded eight-year old girl’s fantasy: the interior is all whites and pastel pinks, and is decorated with paper chain ponies. Cakes on display in the window ranged from one decorated with the nearby Hanyang University insignia to one topped with a Barbie doll to one bearing the goggled visage of Pororo. Unfortunately the bakery was closed so I couldn’t sample the goods, but Meagan vouches for their deliciousness.

If your interest in cupcakes is as constructive as it is destructive, Bonnie’s also offers baking classes. Your Korean need not be impeccable either, as Bonnie spent time living in New York, where she learned how to bake, and speaks excellent English.

Update from Liz: When I stopped by, Bonnie’s Kitchen was open! Bonnie, who prefers to go by her Korean name, Seo-Young, is super nice and informed me that the kitchen no longer sells cupcakes on the go. You can call and pre-order a minimum order of six cupcakes. She was surprised Seoul Sub→urban was interested in her store, but appreciated the opportunity and voiced her apologies that she no longer sold cupcakes on the fly to the foreigners who used to stop by frequently. We chatted for a little bit while I admired her handiwork and assured her I would be linking her bakery up to our post. For information on how to order her adorable cupcakes or sign up for a cooking class, please visit Bonnie’s Kitchen Blog.

On your way to the bakery you’ll pass the Seongdong Culture Hall (성동문화회관) and the Soweol Art Hall (소월아트홀), but the real attraction is just outside, in the adjacent park where, at all hours of the day, you’ll find old men gathered to play baduk (바둑), the Korean version of Go, and janggi (장기), a Korean version of chess derived from the Chinese Xiangqi. It’s strictly an old boys club, but the dress code is relaxed, ranging from suits to utility jackets. The men congregate around park benches in groups of three or four or half a dozen, but there’s very little chatter. Almost to a man they’re focused on the games, and the most prominent sound in the park is left to the gentle clicking of stone on wooden board.

By far the most dominant feature of the Wangsimni area is the enormous Bit Plaza (비트프라자) complex at the east end of the station, and it’s easy to get your bearings from anywhere in the vicinity by looking for the huge tower with the mother-of-pearl-esque sheen on it. The complex covers a large area and different parts are accessible from different ways, so we’ll break things down by their nearest exit.

In front of the complex proper is a bifurcated plaza, and as you come out of Exit 4, directly across the small access road is a bust of 김소월 (Kim So-Weol), which was the pen name of 김정식 (Kim Jeong-Shik), one of early modern Korea’s greatest and most influential poets. Kim died by his own hand in 1934 at the young age of 32, having published only one book, Azaleas, when he was 25. His poem entitled ‘Wangsimni’ is engraved on a stone slab next to the bust. For a bit more on Kim’s life, you might want to read this short piece in the Korea Times by the always excellent Andrei Lankov.

Behind the memorial is a small black and gold clock tower called the Lover’s Clock, which was erected to commemorate Seongdong-gu’s sister city relationship with Cobb County, Georgia, the placement of the apostrophe suggesting that it’s a rather one-sided relationship. On the same side of the plaza and just in front of the complex is the 빛-물-바람의 길 or 걷고싶은 비트거리 (Road of Light, Water, and Wind or Bit Street That You Want to Walk), depending on which sign you refer to. Just in front of Exit 6-1, it’s a small pathway behind a waterfall sculpture where water tumbles over staircase-like green glass slats. Much better as an art installation than someplace you can actually take a stroll.

Behind Exit 4 or just around from Exit 5 the other half of the plaza features a dancing fountain, where about ten kids were taking advantage of one of the last days that was warm enough for splashing, and behind that is a mural wall with one of those rather cheesy sets of painted angel wings for trick photography that seem to be popping up everywhere in Seoul these days.

Both Exit 5 and 6-1 put you right in front of Bit Plaza, near where there was some kind of car promotion going on and people sifted through bins of discount jeans on the day I visited, but Exit 12 connects directly into the middle of the complex.

Bit Plaza has a huge E-Mart and several floors of everything you’d expect at a big Seoul shopping complex: phone shops, cosmetics boutiques, salons, candy shops, shoe stores, Vietnamese noodle restaurants… The fourth floor has a pretty wide ranging food court – bagels, sushi, hamburgers – and the fifth floor is home to both an indoor waterpark and the CGV with Korea’s largest Imax screen.

On the fourth and fifth floors you also have access to outdoor plazas looking west, from which you can see N Seoul Tower and Doota in Dongdaemun popping up above the apartment complexes.

A sign near the elevators advertised the Sky Plaza on the 15^th, 16^th, and 17^th floors, but when we tried to go up the lift wouldn’t take us any higher than the 9^th. An attempt to sneak onto the service elevator was also unsuccessful, as the up button from the ninth floor did nothing.

So what’s on the ninth floor if you get stuck there in your attempts to sneak upstairs? That would be the Golf Dome, a four story (6^th, 7^th, 8^th, 9^th) driving range that’s also part of the complex. If you haven’t been, hanging out in one of these indoor driving ranges for a few minutes can be a pretty Zen experience. Almost no one talks, directing all of their focus to the small white orb set between their slightly more than shoulder width feet. There are barely perceptible rushes as clubs split the air, and an almost regular and gentle tick…tick as clubs meet balls, like the dripping of a water clock.

Connected to the main part of the Bit Plaza complex, near Exits 5 and 6-1, is the Enter 6 Fashion Square, a clothing mall with a rather odd Renaissance-y, medieval-y theme. The merchandise is decidedly 21^st Century – Nike, Converse, Basic House – but the décor is a mashup of Italian Renaissance, Arthurian and Victorian England, and just anything that looks old and European really. A central atrium holds a red-lit fountain of four topless maidens, around which runs a wall with Renaissance-esque paintings, and a random bust placed next to the Starbucks sign. There were also several people in costume: a girl in a dress that made her look like Little Bo Peep, a guy who was supposed to be a court jester but looked more like a circus clown, and a woman in a red gown with white ruffles who turned back and forth like a robot mime. And, of course, the big screen above them played K-pop videos.

Behind Bit Plaza, via Exit 6, is an area of small streets filled with restaurants, bars, convenience stores, DVD rooms, and lots of goshiwons (고시원) and goshitels (고시텔) (small rooms, about three square meters, that students often rent); in short, everything a college student could want. Nearby is Hanyang University (한양대학교) and this little nook is a lively nightlife area, alive in the evenings with students blowing off steam.

Walk straight back from the exit and from Bit Plaza and you’ll come to Majang-ro (마장로) where, near the intersection with Wangsimni-gil, there is a buzzing arcade filled with video games, Dance Dance Revolution, and a singing booth where you can record yourself onto CD. There’s also a line of punching and soccer ball kicking games lined up outside if you need to take out your aggression on something. Idiosyncratically, you’ll also find a small market tucked in the middle of the area. No more than a dozen stalls, it’s an island of seniors in the sea of twenty-somethings around it.

If all goes well and your score on the punching game or dexterity with the crane is sufficiently impressive, you may then wish to avail yourself of the strip of love motels near Exit 1. Take the first right, on Wangsimni-ro-20-gil (왕십리로20길), and pick your pleasure. Just don’t answer the phone if mom calls.

Bonnie’s kitchen (바니스)

Exit 9

U-turn, south on Wangsimni-gil (왕십리길)

070-4135-0030

www.bonnieskitchen.co.kr

Seongdong Culture Hall (성동문화회관)

Exit 9

U-turn, south on Wangsimni-gil (왕십리길)

Bit Plaza (비트프라자)

Exits 4, 5, 6, 6-1, 12, 13

Enter 6 Fashion Square

Exits 5 and 6-1

Hanyang University nightlife area

Exit 6

Love Motels

Exit 1

Right on Wangsimni-ro-20-gil (왕십리로20길)

Tags:art, history, Jungang Line, Line 2, Line 5, monument, nightlife, restaurant, Seongdong-gu, shopping
Posted in Jungang Line, Line 2, Line 5, Seongdong-gu | 3 Comments »

Yeongdeungpo-gu Office Station (영등포구청역) Line 2 – Station #236, Line 5 – Station #523

September 7, 2011

This project started with the goal of answering, at least partially, the question of What’s up there? that inevitably arises while riding the subway, and Yeongdeungpo-gu Office was always one of the most What’s up there? stations for me, as my first year in Seoul I lived in Gangseo-gu, near Songjeong Station, and transferred here countless times on my way to a night out in Hongdae. I passed through almost every weekend, sometimes more, but never bothered to answer the question. And now, here we are.

So what did I miss? Honestly, not that terribly much, as the area is a nice, though largely unremarkable neighborhood. Exit 1 or 2 drops you off right by the small but pleasing Dangsan Park (당산공원). This carefully manicured park fills about a quarter-block with a walking path that winds between well-tended flower beds and past benches where small groups of pensioners sat in the shade. Quite new playground and exercise equipment is available, and there’s also a studded foot-massaging walking path on which one old guy was laying down taking a nap when I passed by.

A small tower near the main entrance displaying the time and temperature read 31 degrees, and not far away about a half-dozen kids were beating the heat by running around in the park’s splash fountain, one jet of which shot water a good 20 feet straight up. It looked like fun, though someone might have wanted to explain to a couple of them that wearing a raincoat defeated the purpose a little bit.

Southwest of Exit 6 the neighborhood was filled with apartment towers, so instead of walking around through there I made a U-turn and went west down Yangsan-ro (양산로), past a man selling watermelons from a cart and past several auto-body shops, before arriving at a couple of very incongruous buildings. Up ahead on the left was the Southern Seoul Labor Employment Branch Office (서울남부고용노동지청), a huge red brick structure, half of which looked like a run of the mill Seoul brick tower, the other half of which looked like some cheap European knockoff with ornamental cement balustrades.

Around the corner on Seonyudong-1-ro (선유동1로) was more poorly thought out knockoff architecture in the form of the Yeongdeungpo District Tax Offices (영등포세무서), whose misfired attempt at prestige just left the faux-European structure looking out of place.

The rest of the area was a pretty regular collection of mid-size apartment buildings and small, mostly independent businesses. Of particular interest, especially to the expat community, is the presence of a Costco Wholesale, most easily reachable by making a U-turn out of Exit 3 and taking the first right, Dangsan-ro-31-gil (당산로31길), and following it straight ahead for a couple blocks.

One of the things you’ll notice about the area around Yeongdeungpo-gu Office is how the neighborhood has changed and continues to change over the years. Yeongdeungpo used to be a major industrial area, with all sorts of factories churning out the raw goods that went a long way toward Korea’s post-war economic boom. As Korea, and Seoul in particular, got wealthier most of these factories moved out of the city, to suburbs and nearby towns where land was cheaper. Recent years have seen sleek skyscrapers built and developments like Times Square move in, but many parts of the area still bear telltale signs of Yeongdeungpo’s blue collar past. Alongside steel and glass high rises, mostly bunched around the intersection of Dangsan-ro (당산로) and Gukhoe-daero (국회대로), you’ll see older buildings with cracked and peeling paint or bricks that are crumbling away. Walking east down Yangsan-ro from Exit 5 will eventually bring you a clearer picture of the district’s past, as here there is still a strip of haphazardly organized wood and plastic and repair shops. If you stand at the southeast corner of the Dangsan-ro and Gukhoe-daero intersection and look up you’ll even spot a weatherworn street sign using the old style Romanization system and translating 영등포구청앞 as Yŏngdŭngp’o-gu Office.

The neighborhood east of Dangsan-ro looked to be a fairly working-class area, with standard brick apartment buildings and small businesses. A U-turn and quick left out of Exit 4 went through a stretch of several streets full of no-nonsense bars and restaurants. The area, despite its slightly gruff initial appearance, had one whimsical touch that gave it an entirely more jovial feel though. All along this street the electricity poles had each been painted with a different cartoon face – one in shirt and tie, one coyly hiding her face – like stolid, ever-good-natured neighbors.

More formalized art is found at the Yeongdeungpo Art Hall (영등포 아트홀), which you can reach also via Exit 4. Walk straight to the intersection and turn right onto Gukhoe-daero. The hall will be a short ways up on your right. The place won’t be confused with some of Seoul’s finer art spaces, but if you’re in the neighborhood it gives you the chance to catch the occasional jazz, classical, or traditional Korean music concert.

Dangsan Park (당산공원)

Exit 1 or 2

Costco Wholesale

Exit 3

U-turn, right on Dangsan-ro-31-gil (당산로31길)

Yeongdeungpo Art Hall (영등포 아트홀)

Exit 4

North on Dangsan-ro (당산로), right on Gukhoe-daero (국회대로)

Tags:art, Line 2, Line 5, park, shopping, Yeongdeungpo-gu
Posted in Line 2, Line 5, Yeongdeungpo-gu | Leave a Comment »

Seoul Sub→urban

Archive for the ‘Line 5’ Category

Gongdeok Station (공덕역) Line 5 – Station #529, Line 6 – Station #626, AREX – Station #A02

Aeogae Station (애오개역) Line 5 – Station #530

Jongno-3-ga Station (종로3가역) Line 1 – Station #130, Line 3 – Station #329, Line 5 – Station #534

Wangsimni Station (왕십리역) Line 2 – Station #208, Line 5 – Station #540, Jungang Line – Station #K116

Yeongdeungpo-gu Office Station (영등포구청역) Line 2 – Station #236, Line 5 – Station #523

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