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…
As I’ve mentioned before, I have a particular affinity for the northwest side of town, where things always feel a bit more relaxed, the air smells fresher, and the mountains, so near, seem to be more a part of the neighborhoods’ fabric than elsewhere, interweaving themselves with the manmade structures erected in the spaces between…
The gates that gave their names to the Dongdaemun and Namdaemun neighborhoods still stand, and their presence puts the stamp of history on the areas around them. They’re constant reminders of the city’s Long Ago and chains that link the contemporary lives lived around them to the lives lived there hundreds of years ago. Seodaemun,…
For the most part, Hwarangdae is a rather bland part of town. It’s pretty much as middle-class as you can get, the better part of the neighborhood being a shuffle of schools, churches, and businesses, many of them chain stores, that provide for the residents of the several apartment tower complexes both north and south…
Seoul Sub→urban 