빨래방 옆에 주스바 by Leah Chung

빨래방 옆에 주스바 by Leah Erica Chung The hipsterization and gentrification of Seoul alleyways and the confused urban aesthetics of a fast-growing city

PREFACE

Seoul has many alley ways. They are narrow, twisting,

non-directional concrete and asphalt passage ways that only a local would know how to properly navigate. You can see how menacing they can be for newcomers by just looking at a street map of Seoul. These narrow alley ways are often weaved into lower-income residential neighborhoods and are home to small mom-and-pop businesses like dry-cleaning shops, hole-in-thewall convenience stores, and old school barber shops. They are usually up steep hills, away from the hustle and bustle of Main Street where the tourists and big corporate shops mingle.

Lately, things have started to shift in these two

disparate kinds of neighborhoods. Let’s take the famous KyungLi-Dan street (경리단길) for example. A once quiet, ordinary street near the famous tourist spot, Itaewon, Kyung-Li-Dan street is now the go-to spot on the weekends. There, you can see young people lining up around the block for churros, the hot-item of the season, and others lining up for a slice of pizza and beer at an open garage-like beer establishment. Wedged in between

빨래방 옆에 주스바

these hip establishments is, say, the mom-and-pop dry-cleaning shop that’s been around for the last three decades. It’s quite an anachronistic juxtaposition (sorry, I sound like an art history douche bag).

At first, I was amazed and excited by the boring alley

ways coming alive with cafes and eateries for young people. It was a lot more interesting and unique than walking the large tourist streets of Myeongdong (명동) lined with corporate makeup stores and four-story cafes. But when you understand these developments are a step in the direction toward gentrification and hear about what it does to its long-time residents, it’s scary.

In another rapidly changing neighborhood called

Seochon (서촌), many are being forced to move out. One 70 year old resident who lived in the same house for 34 years had to move out because the rent soared from $10,000 to $60,000 a year1. A young newlywed just settling in had to move out with ever increasing monthly rent1. A community bath house that had been around for 40 years had to close its doors due to sharply declining number of customers (caused by long-term residents moving out because of aforementioned rent hikes)1. Overall, Seochon has decreased its residential space by 8.8% since 2012 while it has increased in cafe/food establishment space by 129.3%1.

The speed of gentrification is terrifying too. According

to Shin Hyunjoon, a professor at the Institute for East Asian Studies at SungKongHou University, “Insadong (인사동) in the 1990s took about 10 years for gentrification to take full effect,

while Samcheongdong (삼청동) in 2000 took only 5 years. Seochon in 2010 has only taken 2-3 years. It’s getting too fast.”

Garosugil (가로수길) in Shinsa (신사) is a famous street

that has long gone through the full effects of gentrification. It is currently taken over by large corporate clothing stores or cafes. There are still smaller businesses in alley ways but overall, it is becoming less of what it used to be. Hongdae (홍대) is another one that has now spread its gentrification wave to neighboring areas like Hapjeong (합정) and Sangsudong (상수동).

In this photo publication I look at the streets of

Usadanro (우사단로), a hidden neighborhood of residential spaces and decades-old mom-and-pop shops that recently hit a wave of artist and designers setting up shop. It’s a very unique and somewhat confusing area because you see a hipster juice bar that you can swear is supposed to be in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, sitting right next to an old-school, hole-in-the-wall real estate office. This kind of juxtaposition is found in every other shop. I’ve photographed as many of these anachronisms as much as possible, though some photos simply show interesting signs and phenomena of a fast changing neighborhood.

I’m not sure if Usadanro is being gentrified or not. It’s

great that artists and designers are bringing lots of character to these alley ways but I also don’t know if that’s a good thing for the old-timers in that neighborhood. Maybe it is, who knows. But Kyung-Li-Dan started off that way, with innocent art and design studios popping up here and there, until it attracted more and more people, and eventually lots of cash-abundant cafes and

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food establishments. It has happened like a sequenced ecological succession, every time: ordinary neighborhood > low rent attracts artists/designers > people hang out > more people hang out > more shops open up > hot spot certified > large businesses flock > not as unique & original community is long gone

There are the really smart artists and designers who

bring to life the characteristics of the alley way and neighborhood they live in. They interact with long-time residents and enhance the community through their work. But there are those that open up white-walled galleries with expensive sculptures and abstract paintings in the middle of a low-income residential neighborhood.

I absolutely love the maze-like alley ways of residential

areas in Seoul: the brick houses with kelly green roof paint and traditional tile roof tops packed along concrete and asphalt hilltops. It’s a landscape of Seoul that I think is authentic and says more about the character of the city than those horribly tacky high-rise apartments that often block my field of vision.

Since Seoul’s rapid urbanization in the last 40 years,

we have gone from the beautiful, traditional hanok houses to the horrendous marble high rises and nothing in between. There have been little iteration of what the traditional hanok houses would look like in this digital city, and all that is left of them is slowly being turned into fake french cafes.

I was at a design panel organised by the Seoul Design

Foundation last week. The panel included European designers

plus one Korean designer who was based in London, and the panel was held in a swanky over-designed room of the newly built Zaha Hadid complex in Dongdaemun (동대문). The topic was vaguely about Seoul city, its citizens, and design. One panelist from the Netherlands asked the only important question of that talk: “What is Seoul design?”

This question implied that the identity of Seoul design

was blurry and I agreed 100%. Nobody knows what Seoul design is. It’s not about the Nordic-design-emulating objects that up and coming Korean designers are exhibiting at design festivals. It’s not about the horrendously huge Zaha Hadid building that Seoul city got in tremendous debt to build.

When you go to Helsinki, design is embedded into the

city, in every street sign, shop sign, and in every hue of material used to build the city. Nordic design is called Nordic design not because of a few objects that are characteristic of that European region but because everything -- the objects, the communities, the cities, the people, the values -- of that area are all imbued with Nordic design principles. So when that panelist asks what is Seoul design she is really asking what should the streets of Seoul look like to you? What should the alley ways of Seoul look like to you? What should the communities of Seoul look to you?

It’s difficult to offer a firm commentary on the

unique Usadanro area as well as the other already gentrified

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neighborhoods, but it’s important to be aware of what these changes can mean to different people. It’s important to look at these small alley-way changes and reflect on how they might change the architectural and cultural landscape of Seoul.

음성원. “‘서촌’에 사람과 돈이 몰려오자…꽃가게 송씨·세탁소 김씨가 사라졌다.” 한겨레 (2014): n. pag. Web. <http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/society/society_ general/665778.html>.

빨래방 옆에 주스바

Residential houses and mural art

빨래방 옆에 주스바

From left: real estate office, juice bar, Vespa

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Left: hair salon, Right: tattoo shop

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Left: beauty shop, Right: coffee shop

빨래방 옆에 주스바

From left: Hardware store, heating unit repair shop, dry cleaning shop, mini mart

빨래방 옆에 주스바

Left: mini mart, RIght: bakery

빨래방 옆에 주스바

Left: design agency, Right: makeshift garage

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Left: mini mart, Right: textiles design shop/studio

빨래방 옆에 주스바

Left: fried chicken restaurant, Right: leather crafts studio

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Center: Design studio, utility unknown

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Metal yard

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From left: tent company, glass shop, coffee shop

빨래방 옆에 주스바

From left: tent company, glass shop, coffee shop

“여기 2층 쓰레기...버리지 마시오...꼭” “Do not throw out the 2nd floor trash here...please”

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“쓰래기 갓다 노으면 개망신 당함” “If you throw out the trash here, you will be disgraced.”

Left: ad stickers on residential door, Bottom right: clothing alteration ad, Bottom right: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;no parkingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; sign

빨래방 옆에 주스바

Top row: street trash against electricity pole Botom row: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;No Trashâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; warning signs in Korean, English, and Arabic

빨래방 옆에 주스바

Accidentally hipster street typography

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Fried potato snack shop

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From left: signless underwear store, signless vintage clothing store

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From left: unknown, unknown, Taekwondo academy, metal craft studio

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No. 2