June 28 2009
Gwanggyo New Town I had a walk around the area, visited a closed school, met a filthy dog, and saw some overimaginative conceptual artwork. |
June 28 2009
Lakeland I went back to Lakeland to see how it was doing. Surprisingly not so bad. The floating restaurants are all gone, but the amusement park was still untouched, aside from a bit of damage to some of the smaller pieces. |
June 20 2009
Mike in Korea On Saturday night, I stopped in Gangnam to say bye to Mike in Korea, the guy who's been putting up tons of YouTube videos about his surroundings, including a lot of footage of demolition in his own neighbourhood, Geumho. He's working on a full documentary about the area, and it's going to be completed after he leaves the country. This was only the second time I ever met him, but hopefully he'll be back soon. I'd direct you to his video of that night, but it unfortunately involves Jung saying she'd like to be his prostitute. |
June 20 2009
Hair Town Another find brought to my attention by Nik, but he was unable to join us. The rain was good for visiting the hospital, but not this area. This area has been hit by graffiti, by gangsters, protesters, and also visiting artists. If you spend a lot of time on Facebook, you may have seen I exchanged a few harsh words with some of these artists. I ended up somewhat changing my mind about them, as some of the stuff they do could potentially help protesters. For an example, visit this site and click on street art. Hair Town showed a good example of artists like them working together with protesters, though it remains to be seen what influence they'll have. Then again, there's still the threat of crap like this popping up in abandoned neighbourhoods. I really don't want to contribute to the decay of areas like this, and I also don't want to get caught between opposing sides in a matter decided in court. I really don't know how any kind of improvement attempt such as art will go down. Will the area be saved like Dongpirang? Will it provoke gangsters into stepping up their vandalism or harassment of residents? And we should also remember that not all evictees are the good guys--there is a scam where people move into doomed neighbourhoods and wait for the payoff, and some protests may be spurred by these people. It apparently is illegal to knowingly move into a doomed neighbourhood for this purpose before its demolition has been officially announced (can't say I know exactly how it works). Anyway, I'm going to try making more use of nicknames of some of these places. In the past I applied a nickname because I wasn't sure what else to call it, or it was near another abandoned neighbourhood that had the name I would've normally given. Usually I just go by nearest subway station, or failing that a street name. Examples in the past have included Double Dragon Alley, Little Nagasaki, Oksu Amphitheatre, Gangster's Paradise (now retired because everyone knows it just as "Yongsan"). It's more accurate to use those names than to guess where I am. This place gets called "Hair Town" thanks to the number of beauty parlours in one part, with one in particular bearing this name. |
June 20 2009
Finally When I saw it was raining on Saturday morning, I knew it would be a successful day. Sure enough, with Dongdaemoon rained out there was nobody around to prevent us from getting into the hospital. I made two trips in, once alone and a second time with Jim, each time entering the hospital from a different side. We knew there were workers inside, but there was no sound of them. From the second venture in, we almost made it across to my first entry point. As I expected, the hospital was almost totally emptied out. We just managed to luck out and find some unusual rooms. |
June 13 2009
Chinatown Andre had a bit to say about some abandoned buildings in Chinatown, so I went over to investigate. There were only two buildings I could find that were definitely abandoned, but both of them were considerably older than the standard fare. Judging by the blankets covering them, they might be in line for renovation or demolition soon. By the way, if you didn't notice, all my photo exhibition coverage has been over at Daehanmindecline. |
June 13 2009
Space Beam I went back to Space Beam on Saturday. When I showed up, everyone was at lunch and the front door was locked. I got it open and had a while to kill before anyone came. I used the chance to take more photos of the place, and treated a lot of it as if I were in an actual abandoned place. |
May 30 2009
Anusville Anusville, in case you were wondering if I'm serious in the book. I listed several pathetic names of Korean highrises, starting with We've, I Want, and Brownstone, and then took the leap toward Anusville. I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be Honorsville, but Anusville is an equally valid romanisation. |
May 31 2009
Back at the Hospital Another visit ruined by someone being too close to our entry point. |
May 30 2009
Prison Fashion Mall Here's an interesting building found by Nik out in Incheon. It's an abandoned mall that seems to have been completed, and then just never opened. The banner says it was supposed to open last fall, but it didn't. |
June 6 2009 Abandoned Places Photo Exhibition Come out to Incheon on June 6 for an afternoon show and a photo exhibition. There will be four great bands playing, and you can see my photos printed out and professional looking. Plus you can pick up a bilingual guide to urban exploration in Korea. It will be worth the trip. Space Beam is an art gallery inside an abandoned soy factory in an unusual part of Incheon. It was slated for demolition, but now the area is home to one of Korea's few art communities. |
May 23 2009
Morene Market We returned to Morene Market, where demolition has been proceeding quickly. Already a large chunk of the eastern half has been demolished that was standing last time. The plan was to get up onto the rooftop we made it to last time for more photos. Unfortunately a door was locked, so we couldn't make it back to the exact spot. On the bright side, we were higher up. We walked around and found a few interesting buildings. We got inside a kindergarten or daycare of some sort, then we visited some kind of building with a temple-like interior, and then some places where you can borrow a woman's body for a short while. I don't really know what to call these places. They're not quite dabangs. From what I understand they're kind of lower quality prostitution, usually with older workers. You go there and work out a deal to take the visit to another location such as a love motel. Not all that classy. Our walk took us through the active part, where many people were bustling around buying and selling stuff. It's hard to imagine the destruction just a little bit further. We had supper there at a galbi restaurant that claimed to have been open since 1967. I'm assuming this whole area is going to be demolished. We went up on another rooftop in time for sunset. Of course the sun was obscured by smog, but we had a great view of the whole area. As I took pictures, it got darker and darker. |
May 23 2009
Trash Mountain If that is indeed the name that has caught on. We paid a visit hoping to get inside this building, but there were way too many workers around. Second strikeout of the day. |
May 16 2009
University Hospital Nik recently spotted an abandoned hospital along a major route in downtown Seoul. When I went up to see it, he ditched me for a girl again, so I went alone. It was raining too hard, but I found a sure way inside and decided to come back in clearer weather. Maybe not such a good idea, actually.
May 23 2009
University Hospital In good weather, there were too many people around. Workers were on the property taking stuff out of the buildings. In the critical part where we needed to get in, there was a homeless guy sitting. Nothing we could do except head on to other locations. |
May 3-5 2009 Yeosu, Yocheon, Suncheon, Tongyeong, and Masan This one's an extra week late because I put priority on the Space Beam stuff, but you should go over to my other page to see some photos of my trip down south. I visited a few abandoned places in distant Korean towns, including a mall, a ship cafe, and some weird giant concrete structures. |
May 10 2009 Space Beam Head over to Daehanmindecline for some photos of a festival at Space Beam, and a bit of news about my photo exhibition in June. More details to be finalised this week. |
April 26 2009
Oksu Amphitheatre I headed up to Seoul early on Saturday to take advantage of the Sun's position in photographing this newly abandoned part of Oksu/Geumho. It's an amazing area that makes for some very exciting scenery. While we were scrambling around, we were caught by a camera crew from KBS and they interviewed us for the documentary programme "3 Days," in which they spotlight a different part of Korea every week. I guess this area is the topic for next Saturday's show. If you're not out, tune in to KBS1 at 9:40pm to see an interview with me (at some point in the show). |
May 1 2009You don't have to keep telling me about this In case you were wondering, I do know about Chernobyl and Gunkanjima and all the other famous abandoned sites around the world. Speaking of which, here's an article about Japan's famous Gunkanjima written by Alex, who we recently met during the trip to Jumbo 747. Apparently the site has recently been opened to the public thanks to a walkway, which probably means no more sneaking around out there. It's possible Alex was the last unauthorised visitor to Gunkanjima ever. |
April 26 2009
Paldal-gu I started my trip by taking a bus to Paldalmoon, where I would get some breakfast. On the way, we passed the big open square in front of Haenggung and I saw there was some kind of performance/festival with people in colourful traditional costumes. It was right next door to my first intended stop, so I went by to have a look. In fact, throughout this entire visit I could hear the music coming from it and I could see it from rooftops and certain windows. I really wonder why these buildings have been left abandoned here next to a major tourist spot for so long.
The highlight of this visit was definitely the string of very decayed lanterns hanging along the front road.
I didn't stay long, as I didn't want to get caught by construction workers. Instead I walked along a canal and got a look at the highrises going up in the area. Also, I found some conceptual maps of Gwanggyo at a real estate office across the street.
The apartment is actually pretty impressive, as it was clearly once a residence for upper-middle-class people. And they had fireplaces. That was quite a surprise. It was hard to tell if the building is totally abandoned, as one of the stairwells (the second I went in) still had electricity on the motion sensor lights, and the parking garage still had a few cars. I didn't stay around there but restricted my visit to only the more clearly abandoned side. |
April 25 2009
Pimatgol with mikeinkorea Last weekend I took a bus through downtown, and on the way I passed by several abandonments all lined up. In order: All that in a 20-minute bus ride. I noted that they were starting to blanket Seoul Hotel, so I made plans to return this weekend, for what could be the last time. I invited along Mike, a guy who runs a prolific YouTube (hiss) channel dedicated to street scenes, including many videos of abandoned parts of my former neighbourhood, Geumho. We finally met up, but unfortunately workers were too close to the hotel so we couldn't get in. Instead, we went to Bikini University. Mike made a video on top of Bikini University where he briefly interviewed me and Will. Next we went up a higher building to the helipad on the rooftop. He interviewed Nik and Suz, while I slipped (on a perfectly non-precarious part of the roof) and bashed my camera on the surface. It was okay but I'm just glad he didn't get it on video. We contributed a bit more profanity than I think he usually puts in his videos. Actually off camera he swore quite a lot more than I was expecting.
While I was inside it started to rain, and Will started to complain as he wasn't wearing a jacket, hadn't brought an umbrella, and was losing all feeling in his extremities. After that leg of the trip, we lost Will and Mike, and I went up with Nik and Suz to explore the newly abandoned area. On Mike's suggestion we had a rest in an abandoned home with a nice couch, and then walked further up into the area and down to Oksu Station. Mike made a video of us coming from Singeumho where everything was knocked down and scraped away. His next video was from the edge of Geumho Mountain looking down into Geumho. Everything was demolished and we had a spectacular view of how this previously beautiful neighbourhood is being chewed up. His last video was of the colourful abandoned kindergarten. Definitely a good one. Don't be too shocked by the people who suddenly appear from around a corner a little suddenly. |
April 19 2009
Heading West through Morene Market I recently got a tip from Miru Kim that there was an abandoned market just a bit north of Hongdae. It took a back seat to other Vervonaut-related ventures, but I finally made it there on Sunday. Nik met up with me as he had to search Hongdae for his bike, misplaced and forgotten due to alcohol. The market was right where I expected it to be, and we had a look around. There was a fairly large abandoned apartment (about five storeys), and then we found a street with many active businesses. There was music coming from one stand, and it wasn't until I was walking by that I realised we were listening to the vendor himself singing on a karaoke machine. Not a bad voice actually. Nik set his camera to video, but there was no encore. Anyway, from there we ventured further west, finding a more alive flea market where people went about their daily business, seemingly oblivious to the abandoned neighbourhood immediately to their east. We crossed over and discovered that the abandonment continued further westward. It was one of those areas that you keep thinking you've reached the end, but it never stops.
WARNING: Some NSFW images in this first gallery.Also, there is a fair bit of nudity on the other site I linked.
We got into a newly opened highrise complex to see where we'd walked through from up above. The area was divided into two huge halves, one with abandoned buildings and the active market running through the middle, and the other almost totally demolished.
Not that they would've stopped us anyway.
It really was the site that never ends. |
April 19 2009
Downtown On Sunday I headed for Seoul. My plan was first to check up on some landmark buildings awaiting demolition, then head off to something more interesting. This is the first part of that trip. Nothing new to report, other than Kim Swoo-Geun is currently spinning in his grave. There'll be a much bigger update tomorrow. |
January 3 2009
All over Seoul Oops, I messed up. I finished and uploaded these photos in early January, but forgot to include them on the front page. At the time, there was nothing too exciting. This day was intended to be our first trip up to Jumbo 747 in Namyangju, but the train schedule didn't work out. Also, we investigated a second grounded plane inside Seoul, to find that it was gone. After that, we went downtown, where we got easy access to Seoul Hotel and revisited a not so interesting building in Mapo that had a few more surprises than I'd remembered. The shot here, though, is most important. I didn't know it at the time, but I was pointing the camera at one of the largest condemned neighbourhoods in Seoul. You'll see a hefty update on that one in a few days (and over the next few months probably many return visits). |
April 17 2009
Memory-Making Hotel Andre tipped me off to this hotel found in Suwon not far from his place and coincidentally on my way to work. I stopped off on Friday morning and had a quick look inside. It's in a fairly seedy area with lots of middle-aged prostitutes, so I was a little wary about being seen, but got in no problem. |
April 5 2009
Yangjae/Bangbae Two more highrise complexes in different stages of remodelling. Remodelling is apparently different from renewal here, in that the apartment owners are expecting to get a ton of money out of doing it. I'm not exactly sure how it works, but I don't quite see the point of tearing down buildings this size. I mean, sure, they're ugly, but you should've thought of that ten years ago. |
April 5 2009
Jindallae Apartments Nick covers a lot of ground on his bicycle, so he found this abandoned apartment complex at some point in his wanderings. We're going to start seeing a lot more abandonments of this size around Seoul, so I was curious to check it out. It seems to be totally abandoned except for lazy security guards, but all the doors were locked. I expect there'll be a lot of differences between how these buildings get abandoned and how smaller ones do. |
April 5 2009
Nick's Rooftop On Saturday I slept over at Nick's place, partly because Nik disappeared, and partly because it was close to all the places I wanted to visit the next day. We made it up to his rooftop which had a very impressive view. It would probably even be better on a clear day. |
April 4 2009
Flight of the Vervonauts Due to faulty information online, I believed this airplane restaurant was in Mokpo, southwestern Korea. Turns out it's much closer. So, I rallied the Vervonauts for another trip, this time just for one afternoon. We took a half-hour train, looked around, and came back a couple hours later, just in time to miss one of Chadburger's infamous short sets. Apparently all these photos are of JUMBO 747, from its days in service to lying in an American airplane graveyard, all the way to Korea where it became a restaurant. The single interior shot from that site looks old, as it was nowhere near as clean as that when we were there. I've been able to find out that this was the second Boeing 747 ever built, and the first to be used commercially. More resources: |
March 28 2009
Incheon/Gwangmyung On Saturday we went up to Incheon, but not for the usual sight-seeing. Space Beam an art collective of some sort, squatting in an abandoned soy factory, wants to give me a bunch of money to display the best of my photos. The exhibition will be around early June and will run for a couple of weeks. I'm planning to get a few bands to play there so more people will come--at least the musicians will see it. More details will be posted here soon. |
March 29 2009
Suwon We wandered around northern Suwon and Pajang-dong looking for some leads Andre had given me. Unfortunately there was very little left of a condemned neighbourhood, and we couldn't find something else we were searching for. |
April Fools' Day 2009
Tunnel to Kaeseong Let this be a lesson to you--when you follow an underground tunnel, you never know when you're going to end up. We knew we were close to the North in Yeoncheon, but had no idea this was possible. After entering a fairly small tunnel, we went about 200 meters underground before emerging in the North Korean side of the DMZ. The four of us were driven to Kaeseong City, where North Korean authorities were quite sympathetic with us and had a good laugh over our mistake. They let us enjoy the day in North Korea before shipping us to the Kaeseong Industrial Complex run by Hyundai and let them worry about bringing us back to the South. All in all a pleasant adventure with an important moral lesson. |
March 21 2009Jung managed to get a video online of Verv's walk across the rope bridge at Beckham San Land, featuring a very acrobatic fall. Or what's the opposite of acrobatic?She started an account just for urban exploration themed videos, so be sure to subscribe. She has older videos I've been urging her to get online, going back to 2005. |
March 21 2009 Abandoned School The bus trip down consisted of five hours and 20 minutes of Verv pounding soj and belting out whatever absurdities crossed his mind. Fortunately, we were not kicked off, despite probably deserving it. Near the end of the trip, the bus passed by a clearly abandoned school. I looked at Nik and said "We need to find that." Then the bus pulled into the bus depot right next door. Easier than we thought. First we got a motel room, then we had lunch. Verv, a little too full of soju, started berating Will for having said something meaningless about the US army. Oh yeah, and I saw two guys in fursuits, but I may have been the only one. One had a fursuit almost identical to this.
Before we reached it, we found a surprise even bigger than the abandoned school. An abandoned monastery. Or not monastery, but something strange. It was decorated like a Buddhist temple but at the same time wasn't one. Inside we found a photo book of visits from world leaders. In another building, we found pallets of booklets dated December 2008 that were all about the glory of Park Junghee. Where were we?
In a chicken hof, Verv started to crash, but then all of a sudden he hit his third wind and leapt out at us, interrupting us as we ate our fruit platter with a magnificent "Wae-gook-in!" We split into two motel rooms, one in which they couldn't sleep due to Matt's snoring, and the other in which they couldn't sleep due to my snoring.
It was a great final destination of our voyage. Then, in the souvenir shop, Will fell in love with this toy rifle that makes sound effects and lights when you shoot it, and proceeded to shoot at everyone who passed by. He got a variety of reactions, from shocked exclamations and total snubbings to smiles. One soldier in a convenience store thought it was pretty funny. We talked him out of shooting at a cop. The thing really brought out a certain characteristic of his personality. Verv was sitting on the bench next to me looking like he was ready to die as Will kept shooting this thing, and just when I thought he was about to end Will's life, he bellowed, "Will, you're magnificent" and was back on his feet again for a while.
The bus was too full, so I got off along with Jung, Will, and Nik, and the others stayed on. We caught the next one, where the bus driver was a real psycho who yelled at us for anything, and tailgated other buses on the highway. For the first leg of the journey it was only us four Vervonauts, as well as two girls who at first seemed to like when Will shot at them. Then at the next stop the bus filled up with ajummas, and we had to hide the beer, soju, and porn. Here are the photos from some of the other Vervonauts.
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March 21 2009Urban Exploration in Korea podcast A few weeks back I was interviewed by Bassexpander (not sure if it's alright to use his real name due to stalker problems) about some of the stuff I do. We talked about a bit of other stuff, including this pervert in Itaewon Station who really has nothing to do with me. I'm not sure how well the interview went and I'm not going to listen because I hate my voice, but I had the feeling I told him all the interesting stuff while the microphone was off. There are some interesting topics on Midnight Runner, and I put him in contact with a survivor of the Daegu subway fire so we might see that up in the future. |
March 21 2009
The Structure of Goliath: a battle for survival Indymedia Korea is putting on a screening of the documentary about the urban renewal battle in Pung-dong. It's not a place I've visited but it's relevant in the wake of the Yongsan disaster (which Indymedia Korea still calls a massacre). Also, a bilingual discussion about Redevelopment in Korea and the recent Yongsan Fire DisasterIf I'm not way out in the backwaters of North Gyungsang snooping around, I might try to stop by here. |
March 7 2009
From Seocho to Yangjae Saturday was kind of like a rallying of the troops. I recently started getting more active on Flickr, and it's led me not only to new locations but new friends as well. First I met up with Nick/Nic/Nik to look around some locations that he knew and that I knew, accompanied of course by regular Nik as well as Perry. I had a bit of trouble finding Gallery Sogool for Blakey Bear's photo exhibition, but then I tried again and made it. I stopped in and talked with him for a few minutes before racing out in time to catch Chadburger at Club Badabie. Third, I got wind that the renowned/controversial Miru Kim has suddenly turned her attention toward her home country. Miru Kim is a Korean-American urban explorer based out of New York, who came to public attention largely for posing nude for photos in abandoned places. You can hear her explain her art in her own words here and also see some artistic nude photos. At some point in the near future she'll have a photo exhibition at Gallery Hyundai, and I expect some abandoned Korean sites will be appearing in her works. |
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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
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