Almost none of the buildings around Airport Market Station are more than three or four stories tall, and this makes the wide Gonghang-daero (공항대로) just south of Exit 4 seem bigger than it already is.  I used to live close to here – my first place in Seoul was south of the nearby Songjeong Station – but even though I obviously got out to other parts of the city I never really paid att ...

Seoul’s modern history is a tumultuous one, but the city keeps her scars well hid beneath hard-earned layers of development and success.  There are some areas, though, where the wounds have been left exposed, and you can get a glimpse of the troubles the capital and its people have been through.  A good place to do that and to gain a deeper appreciation for how far the city and country have c ...

Gimpo Airport Station presented a rather expected problem, namely, as an airport, there’s not much walking around you can do, and the local topography is limited mostly to three things: big buildings, big roads, and big parking lots.

There are chickens in Myeongdong.  Not stuffed or deep-fried, but real actual chickens, about ten of them, that twitch and peck at the dirt in someone’s small yard.  Administratively speaking, they may technically be in Hoehyeon-dong-2-ga (회현동2가) and not Myeong-dong (명동), but with a strong throw you might be able to hit the station with a stone, and if you get a lucky bounce it mi ...

There are some neighborhoods in Seoul that have their own distinct character or spirit.  Then there are neighborhoods like Chungjeongno that don’t feel quite like their own place but rather sponge up elements of the neighborhoods around them.  West of the station, you quickly find yourself on the edge of Ahyeon’s large furniture market; to the east are new office and apartment towers that s ...

Given that my visit to Sindap coincided with Seollal, coming out of the station’s one exit reminded me a bit of the scene in Westerns when the protagonist steps out of the saloon onto an empty street, the only things a’stirrin’ bein’ tumbleweeds an’ dust. And, OK, my imagination is getting away with me and I exaggerate, but it was awfully quiet. There was a normal-seeming flow of traf ...

If I were a Seoul politician on the campaign trail, I’d spend as much time as possible being photographed in Junggok, glad-handing the locals, saying folksy things, and showing how much I liked spending time with people just like you.  That’s because Junggok is just about the most emphatically average neighborhood you’ll find in this entire city.  The buildings, businesses, demographics, ...

I arrived at Yongmasan Station, named for the nearby mountain, on a bright, crisp January day, and coming out of Exit 2 the first thing I noticed was how hilly the neighborhood was.  Apartment towers to the east sat up on bluffs, and the street just in front of the exit dipped down into a culvert before running back up again so that one second I was ten feet below Yongmasan-ro (용마산로) and ...

And after five years?  What then? The minute someone sits down at a keyboard, sets an f-stop, or turns over a fresh page in a sketchpad and tries to describe a place, it’s already a little bit gone.  Unavoidable and just fine really.  It clears the way for new records, allows for comparisons (maybe even lessons or conclusions), and staves off obsolescence for at least a few magazines and pap ...

If someone were to blindfold you and then drop you off at the intersection above Gongdeok Station, you could be forgiven for thinking you were in Gangnam and not Mapo-gu.  The neighborhood is starkly different from the much more modest nearby areas of Aeogae and Daeheung – massively more developed, a forest of brand new steel and glass towers with streams of heavy traffic moving along the wide ...