March 2008 ArchivesMain page is here. |
March 18 2008
Okpo Land Road Trip! It's not often that I leave the comfort of Seoul, but when I do, crazy things happen. Empires fall. Internal organs fight to the death. Chipmunks masturbate furiously. I've decided to organise a road trip down to Geoje Island to visit Okpo Land Amusement Park again. My friend Jesse is leaving the country at the end of next month, so we have to do this before he leaves. Clicking on the links above will bring you to the Broke in Korea thread where we'll be discussing travel plans. We're going on the first weekend of April, leaving late Friday night and returning Sunday evening. The more the merrier, so if you want to come along, either leave a reply on Broke or contact me or Jesse. We'll solidify more details soon. |
March 24 2008
Hotel I've been keeping this one secret for a few weeks. Downtown there's a ten-storey hotel that was abandoned at the end of last year. It's surprisingly still in good condition, and the owners left behind that wasn't valuable enough to carry out, including mattresses and TVs in most of the rooms. This one was tough to get inside, but once in I was able to unlock one of the main entrances so I could bring others in. My first visit, I was too nervous to hold the camera steady. A lot of areas were very dark, and strange sounds would filter in from outside. Plus, it was a pretty nice looking hotel.
We found a lot of things that would make good costumes, so many of the pictures feature my friends dressed up. The masks were in the lobby, and we tried to incorporate them into most of the pictures. This picture here creeps me out the most. You'll be surprised how many things have been left behind here. All those mattresses could be useful at a homeless shelter. After one visit with Jung, we noticed a drunk across the street passed out on the sidewalk, and Jung considered telling him there was a whole hotel where he could sleep. We decided against it for legal reasons.
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March 20 2008
Protest All day I've been hearing music coming in from the window. When I went out for lunch, I made a point of walking by, and getting a look at the protest. I can't say I understand the whole sign, but I recognise a few words to know what they're there for. These people are being evicted from their homes. I haven't seen anything seriously abandoned in Bundang, but considering how fast the area's growing it's not a surprise. My boss has been complaining about the noise they're making. It turns out as well as being right in front of a police station, they're also next to a hospital that specialises in pregnancy. |
March 19 2008
More Slides Here are a few more slides that I got from the abandoned yeogwan. |
March 16 2008
Pimatgol There have been lots of Pimatgol pictures lately as I'm interested in the area and I have a chance to observe how it will change over the next year. I have a very big update coming soon, but for right now it's something just a little too big to risk exposing to random Internet surfers. I've already gone to this secret location three times and have taken some great pictures, but for now you're just going to have to be patient. They'll be up maybe in a week. |
March 9 2008
Dream Cinema again I stopped by Dream Cinema to see what was going on. They're still showing Dirty Dancing nonstop. If they were to just show one different movie, maybe people would actually care that Seoul is losing one of its few remaining movie houses. |
March 9 2008
Pimatgol There are a lot more active pictures in this entry, because Pimatgol is an area where the traces of old Seoul haven't been purged yet. Pimatgol is an alley that used to stretch from the Great East Gate to the Great West Gate. It was a shortcut for commoners to avoid running into aristocrats, which required them to kneel in the street as their societal superiors passed. Many of these aristocrats rode horses, a symbol of aristocracy in Korea, so the name Pimatgol literally means "avoid-horse alley." Many parts of the historic alley are already gone. My friend Scott Bug wrote about the closure of one section, and took a very powerful picture entitled The Rape of P'imat-gol which shows a gangster trying to grab his camera. That section is now long gone, replaced by a skyscraper I have previously nosed around inside. More recently my old exploring partner Brandon found an article in the Joongang Daily about the history of Pimatgol and its status today. The article totally omits any mention of urban renewal actually destroying any parts of the alley, until the very very very bottom. Even though it seems to describe the section of Pimatgol hidden in the armpit of the skyscraper, the author's attention immediately skips past this section into the maze of alleys up ahead (soon to be condemned). To contrast with that article, you can read about the same alley in the same newspaper in this translation done up by Scott Bug which shows the darker side of urban renewal in the alley. I was fortunate enough to meet up with Scott on Sunday afternoon, and he gave me a short tour of the alley and pointed out some interesting places, including an illegal gambling den, a couple restaurants he knew, and a few places he used to live. |
March 5 2008
Negatives In the entrance of the abandoned yeogwan, I found a big pile of film negatives. It's fun holding them up to the sunlight and developing them in Photoshop later. I know it would work better if I put them on a scanner, but it's more fun this way. I still have way more to go through too. |
March 1 2008
Behind the Hospital After I was done in the gynecology clinic, I took a walk around the neighbourhood behind it. Last time I found a bunch of interesting looking buildings, but they had to wait until I could visit during daylight. There's a small neighbourhood nestled on two sides by construction sites, on one side by the abandoned gynecology hospital, and on the fourth side by a gigantic Korean flag. One interesting thing I found was an empty lot filled with tons of old discarded signs for a variety of businesses.
The island-like quality of these buildings reminds me strongly of the nail house of Chongqing. You can read all about nail houses on Wikipedia, where there is a picture of the famous nail house. Apparently it has a more literal meaning in Chinese characters, and from the pictures I've seen they don't all end up like this, on a column of dirt surrounded by a pit. But this one shows just how long the property owners lasted in the battle with developers. In the end they got half a million dollars. Sometimes China does a lot better on certain human rights issues than South Korea, surprisingly. |
March 1 2008
Gynecological Hospital It was a long week while I dreamed about what wonders could await me inside the gynecology hospital. Unfortunately it was pretty well stripped down, leaving no furniture, just a few pamphlets and smashed glass. The rest of the building was no better off, aside from one room with the mannequins pictured here. According to Jung, this is an ob/gyn clinic, and since abortion clinics are illegal in Korea, abortions would be performed in this place.
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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.