(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…
Dear readers, apologies for the glacial pace of new posts recently. I’m currently working on edits and re-writes for the English version of our book, which we hope to have released in the fall, and until that’s wrapped up the blog will be in something of a state of suspended animation. We appreciate your understanding. More…
On a normal day Euljiro-1-ga pulses with activity, occupying the sweet center between Myeongdong’s shopping bazaar, the metropolitan seat of power at City Hall, and Seoul’s centuries-old main boulevard, Jongno. The day I visited, though, was the day before Chuseok, Korea’s biggest holiday, and with many shops closed and a large number of Seoulites out…
Not long ago we ventured out to Oryu-dong and Onsu, and I commented on how they felt more like provincial whistle-stops than like stations on Seoul’s metro. Given that those two are way out on the city’s edge, this wasn’t especially notable; what was more surprising was that I got the same feeling from Kwangwoon…
Seoul Sub→urban 