Should you ever find yourself sick of the new Seoul, of the gentrifying Seoul, of the Zara-wearing, cream pasta-slurping, Kakao-tapping, latte-sipping, craft beer-tippling bourgeois masses, well, Cheongnyangni has your cure. This may be the least trendy neighborhood in the city. It’s no hyperbole to say that 80% of the people here are over 50. Nobody’s…
Almost any time you step onto the Korea University (고려대학교) campus, one of the sights you’re bound to see is large groups of high school students being led around by their teachers or KU student docents. They’re there to get a taste of the university life and, maybe more to the point, a bit of…
For the longest time I was under the impression that there was an actual resort at Ttukseom Resort Station, a victim, it turns out, of a rather loose-fitting translation. A more direct rendering of 유원지 (yuwonji) would be something like ‘pleasure grounds,’ though that of course doesn’t strike the ear as quite right either. An…
(Editor’s Note: Photos by Merissa Quek.) The cover of the Gwangjin-gu (Slogan: A City of elegance, livable Gwangjin) promotional booklet that the kind docent at the Achasan Goguryeo History Musuem handed to me shows an aerial shot of the district, mostly a confetti smattering of densely packed apartment rooftops, broken by the occasional vertical tower. …
(Editor’s Note: Photos by Joshua Davies.) Symmetry. Seokchon possesses so much of it that it often feels as if you could fold the neighborhood over on itself just about any which way and its halves would fit snugly together with a satisfying little click. Each of the four quadrants that the area’s two main roads…
Seoul Sub→urban 