July 4 2008
Goons. Hired Goons. It may be a while before you see any new pictures from me (I'm taking my camera in to see if it's still covered under warranty tomorrow), so here's a project I've been saving for a day like this. After my first photo essay on the subject, I did another roundup later using slightly different search terms and put together a lot more photos. I got a lot of photos of eviction in action, including some tense standoffs with the police and hired goons. A few weeks ago, there was a controversy when a hired goon beat up an old woman for selling kimpop from a stand downtown. It happens all the time, but people started to notice when a video made it online. Not exactly related to what I do, aside from the fact that it's guys like this who are hired to guide the early stages of the urban renewal process. |
June 21 2008
University While driving past, I decided to stop at the university and get a closer look at how the demolition's going. I climbed up the mountain and jumped over the fence in the forest designed to keep people out. It also provides adequate cover for climbing over, if you don't mind meeting some freaky insects. I didn't stick around long, as I had somewhere to be, and decided to come back late at night.
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June 15 2008
Rooftop Just for something to do, Jung and I went up to the rooftop of a high-rise apartment building near Beotigogae Station. From up here, we could see Tower Hotel, as well as a long narrow alley of Seoul between Geumho Mountain and Namsan. |
June 15 2008
Tower Hotel We breeched security (pictured on the left) to investigate further into Tower Hotel. This time we got into the third building, to find it in similar gutted shape to the other two. Electricity was off inside the main hotel, so we decided not to navigate the pitch-black basement. On the bright side, we did discover the fate of the hotel: it's going to be redeveloped into a six-star luxury resort at a cost of "70 billion" (is that won or dollars?). It also turns out that the original hotel was designed by architect Kim Soo-geun, who clearly knows how to design a building more interesting than his contemporaries today. A quick online search revealed that he's the same guy who designed Seoul's Olympic Stadium, as well as apparently the Sewoon Arcade buildings (see two entries down). I'm gonna need to do more research into what this guy did. Anyway, I'm glad to see that it appears they will be largely keeping the buildings faithful to their original design. |
June 14 2008
Dongdaemoon After last week, I had to go back to Dongdaemoon to confirm my suspicions, that this line of white buildings along the northern edge of Cheonggyecheon are the same buildings that Paul and I explored in 2005. The catch: when we explored them, they were seven storeys tall. I selected some pictures from back then, and set out to rephotograph them from the same locations to see the changes. This proved impossible due to new trees and other factors. However, I think you can clearly see that these are in fact the same buildings, chopped down to two storeys high. I'm torn. Not about "Why?" or even "How?" but more importantly, "Which is more baffling, the 'why' or the 'how'?" Let's think about it. First, it is clear that the top five storeys of the building were removed, and the third floor was converted into a rooftop. The 'how' leaves a lot of questions unanswered, like "How did they remove all the materials?" "How did they do it without disrupting the area?" And "Why did they stop there?" Why, if you're demolishing a building, would you spare the bottom two floors? Why take down those floors? It seems they just spent a ton of money to remove floor space. What is the point? I just don't get it. |
June 14 2008
Downtown Arcades Stretching from north to south through downtown, you can find four very interesting buildings that make a long, straight line. Starting with Sewoon Arcade in the north, these buildings were constructed in the '60s, when they would've been the tallest structures around. Certainly an ambitious project that promised to change the face of Seoul. Not sure how successful they were back then, but as the decades roll by, the grandest buildings become the cheapest. Recently I stumbled across a map showing redevelopment plans for downtown Seoul. It seems all four buildings and their surrounding neighbourhoods are going to be turned into parkland, one of four "Green Belts" intended to make the city cozier after Yongsan Garrison is closed (the arcade buildings are numbered 3 in that image). I'm not against this plan as of yet, aside from the loss of these very cool buildings, but I'm sure I'll swiftly change my mind once the mayor hides behind Jesus' robe and hires gangsters to chase out the poor people in the neighbourhood. |
June 14 2008
Dangook University The buildings of Dangook are falling fast. I guess they finished all the prepwork inside, so now all they have to do is knock down the empty shells. This seems to be the fast part, judging by how many buildings are gone now. |
June 7 2008
Tower Hotel On the way out on Saturday, we passed by an interesting looking building up on the leg of Namsan. My first look told me it was under construction, but then I noticed that some windows had been smashed. After we finished in Double Dragon Street, we stopped by here again to see what was up. Another telltale signal was that the front steps were heavily eroded, not new. There was a tollgate but it was unmanned, and there was a lot of foot traffic going through the property. It led up to a very compelling building that was clearly a hotel. However, we only went inside the first building.
June 8 2008
Tower Hotel I went back alone the second day. This time, security stopped me in front of the hotel building. The guy was nice enough, which meant he was only turning away people who went the wrong way. That meant it was time to look for a back entrance, which I found without too much difficulty. My card was nearly full though, so I only took low quality images and left quickly. Unfortunately, the hotel building is also gutted on the inside. I suspect that both buildings are being renovated. If they were being prepped for demolition, they wouldn't have been so careful to strip all the interior walls. |
June 7 2008
Double Dragon Street Jung had nothing to do during the day on Saturday, so we went to Gongdeok where I'd been hoping to bring her sometime. It's a fairly large abandoned neighbourhood, although most of the buildings have been emptied out. I figured it would be a good place to photograph her. We ended up making friends with this old man who lived with his two dogs in a home on the edge of the demolished zone. I'm not sure if he'll have to move out or if he was just lucky enough to be outside the condemned area. He was eager to round up his dogs to pose for photographs with us, and he managed to get one good shot with my camera of me and Jung holding the dogs.
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June 6 2008
Dongdaemoon I went back to Dongdaemoon on my day off, interested to see what was going on with the stadium. It's mostly gone, but there were many other places to visit in the area. I made it into the third building in Seongdong High School, which turned out to be gutted, but they had a cool surprise on the roof. I also discovered a rather extreme change in the area. Would you believe me if I told you the white building with the green roof in the above photo used to be seven storeys tall? It doesn't seem possible, or even reasonable, but this whole block of buildings has been cut down to two-storey structures. I didn't even see it happening. Last time I passed there, it seemed like they had totally restored the buildings. Anyway, I'm dumbfounded.
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June 1 2008
Hotel District I figured it would be smart to return to this place near Jung's work, where I had previously seen a large number of big buildings in various states of condemnation and demolition. In the end I got into four of them, although for the most part they were all gutted. Then I made one great discovery. If the start of this gallery seems like a letdown, don't leave without seeing the part at the end where I head underground. Also, watch out because there are a couple pornographic images in this gallery of a video tape box that I discovered. Not work safe unless your boss is a fan of nude golfing, and you can hope he's not. |
May 31 2008
Nasan Homeplace Finally everything fell into place and I got inside Nasan Homeplace with Tel. By now I've got a lot of practice getting over the fence, but Tel who went second had to wait a few minutes to be confident the coast was clear. We got inside and didn't waste time heading up. We made it all the way up to the roof and then went down again, creating a new and easier point of entry to the building. There were a lot of noises below us that sounded suspiciously like someone else inside, but I highly doubt it. However, either one of us alone would've been pants-shittingly terrified. |
May 29 2008
Dead Mall A dead mall is simply a shopping mall with a high vacancy rate and/or low consumer traffic level. The mall across the street from me in Yatap fits this description. There is still a lot of foot traffic inside, as it has a grocery store on level 3, a bus terminal on the main floor and first sublevel, and a movie theatre on the second sublevel. But still a large amount of retail space is vacant. The most likely reason for this is the opening of Kim's Club down the street. As a consequence of this competition, Themepolis may have lost one of its important anchor stores (a Carrefour according to an online poster), and while some parts of the mall are busy, large sections are vacant. Naturally I had a look through and tested how loose the security was. |
May 25 2008
A couple exteriors On Sunday morning I headed to the department store, but my scooter ran out of gas, crippling my plan to get over the wall (it involved a very large ramp and a parachute attached to my scooter). I ended up waiting around for a couple hours but the opportunity did not present itself. After I got gas for my scooter, I did a quick pass of the university, which is looking even closer to its end. |
May 20 2008
Holy Hill A site that I had recently floccinaucinihilipilificated, the hilltop neighbourhood in Yongsan, has come to my attention again. This article in the Marmot's Hole from last November has a few pictures of the area before it was leveled. I was certain there was something sizeable on top of the hill, and now I know it was the Sungsan Methodist Church. There's a lot to read on there, and it gives you a bit more of an idea what the area was like before I made it there. |
May 11 2008
Homeplace I woke up early on Sunday morning to visit the department store. Tel was supposed to meet me, but it looks like we just missed each other. I found an easy way past the fence, and with a bit of poking around I got a point of entry open. However, because I was alone I decided to abort the mission. Getting back over the fence wasn't particularly hard, although I'm glad I wasn't wearing steel-toed boots for once.
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May 10 2008
Hotel Mirabeau On Saturday I returned to the hotel near Ehwa, hoping circumstances would permit me to get inside the main building. I had to be patient, but after an hour of waiting the workers all left and I easily got in. Demolition has started on other buildings, but the hotel itself was still in good condition. It ended up being more interesting than I thought. |
May 5 2008
Geumho I took Jung up to the rooftop of a former church so she could get a good view of our neighbourhood. This marks the third church I got into this weekend, although it's not really a church any longer. They just never took the cross down on top. Unfortunately most of the pictures I took were underexposed, so I had to brighten them a lot. I think I'll have to go back later to take better shots. |
May 3 2008
Hoehyun Apartment Jung finally had a day off on Saturday, and she wanted to go out and see something. I was all explored out, but I took her to the Hoehyun Apartment. We made a new friend with a Korean boy who was hanging around, who I will call Short Round. After we walked by him, he announced that he was going to follow us, and he came up to the apartment building with us. Figuring we weren't going to get rid of him, I bought him a popsicle and got him in a lot of the pictures. We said goodbye to him and came back later so we could look around without him following us. Nothing against the kid, but we were both a little uncomfortable with the idea. |
May 3 2008
Arcade building There are several buildings in downtown Seoul that have this same grand shape. They look like ships sailing across the city. I'm convinced that all of them are in one long row, but I haven't gone the whole way yet. I know the ones near Cheonggyecheon are going to be torn down, and probably the rest will follow soon. Each one is in a slightly different style. What they have in common is the long, thin design, with a variety of residential and commercial environments for people. There are the arcades along the underside, and the plaza above them, and then the buildings themselves. We found this one I'd never seen before, and went all the way up to the roof. |
May 2 2008
Department Store I went up to another rooftop so I could get a better look at the empty department store in Gangnam. It turns out a friend of mine used to live behind it, and he met his wife who worked there. This was over ten years ago, and the place has been abandoned since then. I'm very surprised to find out how long it's been sitting there. |
May 2 2008
Yaksu Apartments I got into the Yaksu Apartments complex, but the only buildings I could get to were pretty well emptied out. There were a few other people in the complex, and I saw the security guard letting a car out at one point. I was seen by one guy who was there, and quickly made my exit. |
May 2 2008
South Side I drove Jung to work on Friday, and then right around the corner from her office I found a whole area with buildings in various states of abandonment. She works very close to a major bus terminal, so there are a lot of hotels in the vicinity. This one area which is mainly hotels is being closed down. I found one hotel with no easy way inside, and a few other buildings I couldn't get to because of workers. This one is worth a trip back. |
May 1 2008
Hotel My final stop of the day was this abandoned hotel on the corner of a busy road in front of Ehwa Women's University. It was in pretty rough shape so I didn't look around too much, but if I could get to the rear stairwell I'd have no problems. That might warrant a return trip, although I doubt this place will be standing long. Not quite as nice as Seoul Hotel. |
May 1 2008
Bird's Eye View of Gongdeok As I continued on my way, I stopped by a tall building to get another look at Gongdeok. This picture shows the area where the old abandoned neighbourhood from 2005 was. It's nice to see they replaced it with a plain white building named "Brownstone." Probably all the other small buildings around here will be bulldozed too. |
May 1 2008
Yet More Gongdeok Further up the road I found another abandoned neighbourhood, this one ranging from small traditional houses to three-floor apartments like my own home. The homes were in fairly good condition with very little vandal damage, and it looks like everyone took their time moving out, as all the homes were pretty well empty. Down near the bottom of the gallery, I got into a yeogwan, which is a Korean style of hostel. Mark that the first hotel-related building I entered for the weekend. |
May 1 2008
More Gongdeok Across the main road, I found a different abandoned neighbourhood. I was too late for this one, and all that's left are a couple commercial buildings on the north end, and this old traditional building. This marks the second church I've been inside this weekend. |
May 1 2008
Return to Gongdeok If you go back to the bottom of the archives for this page, you'll find some interesting pictures of this neighbourhood back when most of the homes were still standing. It was actually one of the most violent places I've seen, with gates smashed and walls torn open. I assume it was done by hired goons with sledgehammers. Now almost all those buildings are gone. All that's left are a few derelicts and a small amount of businesses that are leaving. Which I, of course, paid a visit to. |
May 1 2008
Wrong Side of the Tracks On the first day of my five-day vacation, I aimed my scooter west and very slowly crossed the city. My first discovery was this mostly demolished neighbourhood just north of Yongsan. Actually, we almost moved into a rooftop house a couple blocks away from here. There were a few non-residential buildings too, including a warehouse, a church, and a very unusual wooden house. |
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CONTACT
Jon underscore Dunbar at Hotmail
010-3212-2812
Please remember that these photos are all copyrighted to me. If you want to use them in any way, there's a 90 per cent chance I'll give you my permission, and be able to give you a copy with a higher DPI.Copyright Jon Dunbar 2004
Photos taken by
Nikon CoolPix 950
digital camera.