J. Scott Burgeson says goodbye to Seoul’s historic Pimatgol neighborhood while noting the cultural disaster taking place in downtown Seoul. Read it in its entirety — here’s just a sample:
The great irony here is that a too narrow focus by local authorities on preserving the representative areas of traditional “high culture” in Seoul at the expense of those considered less “worthy” of protection means that often the best of both yangban and sangmin heritage is lost, with only their less appealing aspects remaining in a kind of debased, hybrid form. The fewer traditional or quasi-traditional neighborhoods in Seoul that survive, the rarer and more valued they become, and in fact property prices in Bukch’on have increased tenfold on average since 2001, the year City Hall began subsidizing hanok renovation and restoration there. Thus, it is not too much of an exaggeration to say that Bukch’on is becoming a kind of latter-day or “neo-yangban” district as local elites push out those who can no longer afford to live in the area — even as it becomes increasingly tourist-oriented and commercialized, and therefore less and less authentic as an organic residential environment. At the same time, radical gentrification of such neighborhoods as Ch’ongjin-dong means that whatever funky charm they once may have had is being effaced by a bland, yuppie-oriented “modern” environment more characteristic of nouveau-riche Kangnam (South Seoul) than old-school Chongno. Indeed, few can honestly say that the purported goal of “upgrading” the downtown area is even being met, since the record shows that most developers here are more concerned with maximizing profits via cheap, shoddy design and building materials, rather than enhancing and improving the aesthetic character of Seoul’s most historic district. As one long-time worker at the Korea Tourism Organization recently told me, “Chongno is a very important street in Seoul and should be ‘elegant’ and ‘graceful’… but it’s not.” She’s right, of course: It’s more of a muddled mishmash of “high” and “low” that in general manages to be at once snooty and pretentious (“Le Meilleur”), and rather vulgar and crude (Chongno Town). The overall arc of development in greater Chongno, including both Bukch’on and Ch’ongjin-dong, may aspire towards a kind of yangbanhwa, but the end result seems closer to base “sangnomhwa” more often than not.
And it didn’t have to be this way.
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“Sangnomhwa”
Good thing you guys have devoted your lives to discovering how disappointing Koreans can be.
it is sad to see that area get torn down. I fondly remember back in 96 sitting in the net cafe happy to be able to check email even if it was only using pine etc. for years we when we would come to seoul we would stay in a little yeogwon behind the chicken rest next to the seoul hotel (the dong-il was its name and it cost 20,000 won/nite) and eat in those restaurants in fact during world cup in 02 i put about a half-dozen american soccer fans there and they tell me its one of their fondest memories of coming here. that alley had character.
why couldnt the idiots at city hall preserve that area?
I was by there a month ago and the only place close by to eat was an over-priced western-style dump inside the Kyobo building. The area is quite a dead zone and, when combined with street protesters and police buses, it just plain sucks. I just wonder which western-crap-food chain will install itself in the first floor of whatever gets thrown up in that space.
I guess the city wants to boost its tax revenue, get a construction kick-back (which will be split up between certain people who’s job it is to distribute the money further) and show the world they can make another modern building that has no intrinsic value whatsoever.
My first e-mail sent from Korea was from that joint behind the former Burger King in 1996. I am never really amazed when I see an empty zone that was once a building….but a few months ago while walking in to the back entrance of Kyobo I did a double-take when I saw that Burger King and the former PC cafe were gone. Fu@$.
I came back in 2000 just when Seoul was finishing the ‘new Insadong’. What a tragedy that was.
If by “over-priced western-style dump inside the Kyobo building,” you’re referring to Avenue 1, the wife and I actually like that place.
Robert, bless you and sorry, but in comparison, for the same money (30,000 won), try DiningTent – David’s Kitchen around Karosu Street. It’s like night and day.
They have a blog on naver. I can’t embed the URL since the spam filter is killing my comments.
I used to go down there and use that same decrepit net cafe in the mid 90s. But I do remember pretty much holding my breath to get to the entrance because of some of the ‘exotic’ fish smells in that sordid little alley.
There is a bit of irony in protesting the destruction of Pimat Gol. If Japanese era buildings could be destroyed because of the oppression they represented, it’s hard not to say the same thing about Pimat Gol. If I am not mistaken, it was where commoners walked to stay out of view of royalty and / or the upper classes. I believe being seen was punishable; even very severely so.
Whether or not to preserve remnants of an oppressive history is something for Koreans only to decide, IMHO.
i was always fond of some of the better mackerel restaurants there but disgusted to look down from the kyobo building onto what looked like a human rat nest.
yes, somewhat shoddy construction that flaunts the concept of enforceable building codes and exposes a void of appropriate planning… sounds like the successful project management style that launched the latest president into the blue house. it’s all about form over function and rusty metal trim staining the exterior two years after it’s finished.
all the crap 5 story apartment houses they built in Seocho in the early 80s were torn down in the 90s… maybe they had a 15 year lifespan. since then they’re building semi-crap 20+ story apartment buildings that may have a 25 year lifespan. it will be lots of fun watching them try to tear those suckers down. and the folks who buy them seem to have little understanding that in this particular construction economy, buying an apartment is like buying a car… depreciation sets in as soon as you move in and flush the toilet. let the ruling class continue to buy seven of the new $500k apartments and sit on them in hopes of selling them for $800k. the housing economy in Korea here has yet to take the dump, but it is coming. and those construction executives and developers deserve to lose every penny when it arrives.
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