Category: Architecture

The fieldwork trip to Seoul last month felt less like a visit and more like a slow immersion. I arrived with a simple, persistent question: how do neighborhoods survive when culture itself becomes a form of commodity? Over three days, walking through Bukchon, Insadong, Hongdae, Euljiro, and Dongdaemun, tracing everyday negotiations between preservation, creativity, and survival, this text follows the fieldnotes reflecting on the fragments of a city in motion, where heritage and labor remain inseparable from the struggle to live and work in place. These notes are not conclusions; they are observations, sometimes contradictory, sometimes incomplete, yet grounded in experience.

Day 1: Bukchon – A Neighborhood hypergentrified

Bukchon presents itself as a model of careful preservation. Narrow alleys, tiled roofs, hanok architecture – everything between Gyeongbokgung and Changdeokgung looks like a curated postcard. Yet beneath this curated surface lies tension. Signs read “Please keep your voice down, people live here.” or “No admittance to outsiders“. Furtherdown an alley, I met Mr. Kim, sweeping leaves at his doorstep. His family has lived here since the 1970s. “This is no longer a place to live, but a place to be viewed,” he said. Rising property taxes, guesthouses, and boutique cafés have reshaped everyday life. Houses are now viewed as galleries.

Research shows that heritage preservation in Seoul often prioritizes visual coherence over sustaining lived social relations (Gibert-Flutre & Imai, 2020). Rooflines and alley widths remain, but everyday practices, social networks, and informal encounters are being replaced by images for consumption. Bukchon becomes a curatorial project: a neighborhood stabilized as a photograph, not as a living place.

Research about this topic reinforces this concern, showing that areas like Bukchon and Ikseon-dong are increasingly functioning as cultural stages, where residents become incidental to the neighborhood’s value as a consumable urban aesthetic (Korea Herald, 2025). Local life is not simply displaced, it is reconfigured into a backdrop for visitor experience, even more visible during events like the Seoul Architecture Biennale taking place between October and November 2025.

Day 2: Between Insadong & Hongdae – Culture as Market, Culture as Survival

The next day (re-) encountering, Insadong, it soon becomes quite clear that the place markets itself as Seoul’s “traditional art street.” Calligraphy shops, tea houses, galleries, yet much is geared toward short-term consumption. In a tiny store, Ms. Hyeon, the shop owner, explained: “People come here to feel a version of Korea that is already packaged. Easier and faster to experience...” Moreover, rising rents have pushed out artisan families; imported mass-produced goods now dominate. Heritage is performed, yet increasingly without the people who once inherited it.

On the other hand, Hongdae thrives on youth culture and independent creativity, yet faces its own commodification. Street musicians play beside global cafés; murals are repainted under branding sponsorship. Two art students selling zines told me: “We create because this is where we found each other, but any space we make eventually becomes profitable for someone else.”

Urban ethnography calls this cycle “cultural extraction” (Uršič & Imai, 2020). Creative labor raises an area’s desirability, displacing the creators themselves. Between Insadong and Hongdae lies the same question: when culture becomes an economy, what happens to the people who live it rather than consume it?

Day 3: Euljiro, Jewelry Alleys, Dongdaemun – Work, Craft, and the Fabric of Dependency

On our last day we encounter Euljiro which remains one of Seoul’s densest industrial districts. Alleys echo with metal grinders, workshops produce signage, machine parts, and repairs. Researchers document these vanishing neighborhoods as redevelopment advances. Labor, community, and informal cooperation are intertwined; the city risks losing the invisible networks that keep it alive (Korea Times, 2025).

In the jewelry alley near Euljiro 4-ga, I met Ms. Choi, who runs a three-person workshop. Her tools are worn but cared for; trays of tiny clasps lie in careful order. She emphasized how each step of production depends on proximity: polishers, engravers, stone-setters, couriers. “We survive because we are close. If we scatter, we disappear.”

Later, Dongdaemun’s night market illuminated another rhythm. Couriers balanced parcels through narrow alleys; wholesalers lifted bolts of fabric under fluorescent light; street vendors assembled their stalls well past midnight. Hae-won, a vendor, said: “People say the city never sleeps. But it’s us who stay awake so the city can look alive.” The life of the city depends not on buildings or lights but on countless unseen acts of labor and care.

First reflections

What makes neighborhoods visible is relational labor, not form. Community exists in ongoing acts of care, negotiation, interdependence. Remove these, and all that remains is an beautified image of an neighbourhood. This is why research like this is necessary: to trace these invisible threads that sustain urban life. Seoul, like Tokyo or Taipei shows that memory, creativity, and survival cannot be separated from the spaces that host them. The broader question remains: how can local worlds persist in the accelerating economies of global urban change?

References

Gibert‑Flutre, M., & Imai, H. (Eds.). (2020). Asian Alleyways: An urban vernacular in times of globalization. Amsterdam University Press

Korea Herald. (2025) Pritzker-winning Riken Yamamoto warns Seoul faces crisis without new housing vision, https://shorturl.at/NMLzr

Korea Times. (2025) Architectural firm’s exhibition reveals Seoul’s vanishing neighborhoods, https://shorturl.at/5GIgC

Uršič, M., & Imai, H. (2020). Creativity in Tokyo: Revitalizing a mature city. Palgrave Macmillan Singapore.