ID :
405126
Wed, 04/27/2016 - 03:26
Auther :

Past meets present in Seochon

By Shim Sun-ah SEOUL, April 27 (Yonhap) -- About a 10-minute stroll from the busy Gwanghwamun intersection takes you to Seochon, one of the oldest neighborhoods in central Seoul. Seochon stretches out from the western gate of Gyeongbok Palace, the main palace during the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), to the foot of Mount Inwang. In Seochon, there are huddles of traditional Korean houses in alleyways that have remained virtually unchanged for more than 200 years. Travelers can also find beautiful cafes, fancy restaurants, galleries and boutique shops hidden in these rabbit warren passages. Originally, Seochon was inhabited by the royal families and concubines of late kings in the early Joseon era. It was where King Sejong, the fourth monarch of the dynasty who invented the Korean alphabet "hangeul," was born and his third son, Prince Anpyeong, and Jeong Cheol, one of the greatest poets of the Joseon era, lived. But it later became a base of the middle class who mainly engaged in technical jobs, while Bukchon, a neighborhood located east of the palace, remained as a residential area of the "yangban" or ruling class. In modern-day Korea, many renowned artists such as poets Yun Dong-ju and No Cheon-myeong, poet-novelist Lee Sang, and painters Park No-su and Lee Sang-beom have also lived in Seochon. On Sunday, the Seoul Metropolitan Library offered a guided tour of Seochon for Seoul citizens in cooperation with the Center for Story Managing, a Seoul-based humanities think tank. The first 40 applicants were chosen to take part in the program, the third of the library's monthly city tour series that began in February. The program provides 10 half-day trips to the city's historically important places such as Bukchon Hanok Village, Deoksu Palace and Hongdae, a bustling college campus neighborhood dotted with clubs and bars in western Seoul. The Seochon tour began at the Hyojadong branch of Woori Bank located just across from the western gate of Gyeongbok Palace. "This broad road was a waterway before," Lee Hoon, CEO of the institute, told the tourists, pointing to the six-lane road between the palace and the bank. "If you dig down deep into it, you'll find many relics such as a bridge. And here, where you stand, was a waterway, too." The Baekwundong Stream is where the Cheonggye Stream, an 11 km-long modern steam that runs through the heart of Seoul, originates but was covered up with concrete by Japanese colonizers in 1925 to build a road. Korea was a colony of Japan from 1910 to 1945. "This bank branch is very important because it is where the site of Lee Bang-won's house begins. This wide expanse of land spanning to the headquarters of the People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy was where his house was located," he said of the third king of Joseon and father of King Sejong. He said the bank site is presumed to be where King Sejong was born judging from the inner structure of a typical house of that era, although some historians are against the theory. Since its foundation in 1968, Woori's Hyojadong branch had served as the principal transaction bank of Cheong Wa Dae, the presidential office, until the inauguration of the liberal government led by President Roh Moo-hyun in 2003. Formerly called the "vault of Cheong Wa Dae" for that role, it still has as many as 500 private vaults in service. For the Seochon tourists, the bank has another significance -- it is the starting point of the tour. Visitors become completely lost in time while walking down the long alleys leading to Suseongdong Valley because buildings from all different periods are there. They range from hanok built in the 30s to two-story red-brick houses from the 60s and the 70s and modern structures built in the 2000s. Since the neighborhood had been under a strict development ban for its proximity to the presidential office until the launch of the Kim Young-sam administration in 1993, it still retains its old world charm. A remodeled hanok known as the home of the genius poet-novelist Lee Sang (1910-1937) is also along an alleyway there. The house was designated as a cultural heritage for being inhabited by the author of "Ogamdo" from age 3 to 20, but was later found to have nothing to do with him. Built on part of the land where Lee's home was before, the structure was there for more than 80 years. It is currently open to tourists for free. The tour then takes people to a secondhand bookstore, a Chinese restaurant, a beauty salon and a barber shop that have preserved their original styles dating back to the 50s and 60s. The "Daeoh Bookstore" with a partly peeled-off handwritten signboard is the oldest bookstore in Seoul. Founded in 1951 by a couple, the small bookstore building doesn't have any resemblance to hanok at first glance. But when you take a step inside, you'll see a typical hanok structure with a small courtyard. The store, one of the tourist magnets in the neighborhood, is currently a cafe with the same exterior of the old secondhand bookstore. Tongin Market, a traditional market, is famous for its signature fried "tteokbokki," rice cakes in chili red pepper sauce. It's on a road leading up to Suseongdong Valley and is the snack U.S. Ambassador Sung Kim took U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to sample during his visit to Seoul in 2014. Established in 1941 for Japanese residents in the neighborhood, the market later became a place for the economically less privileged class after Korean liberation. Upon her arrival at the site of poet Yun Dong-ju's rental home, Choi Tae-ho, one of the participants in the guided tour, read aloud "Seo Shi," Yun's signature poem attached to the front wall of the house, as Ko Myeong-seog, a visiting professor of the Kyunghee University who guided the tourists, asked her to do so. Yun is known to have completed the famous poem at a rental home near today's Yonsei University in Seoul when he was a student. The tour also made stops at the house and studio of Lee Sang-beom (1897-1972), a painter who was famous for Korean black-and-white landscape paintings, and a Western-style house from the 30s formerly owned by painter Park No-su (1927-2013). Lee's tranquil hanok, which sits at the end of a narrow alley, was designated as cultural heritage No. 171 and is well preserved by his daughter-in-law who still lives there. It is where the painter lived for more than 43 years. "This is my first time to be here although I've been living in Seoul for more than 30 years," said Choi, a 59-year-old civil servant, who joined the tour together with her co-worker. "I liked Lee Sang-beom's house the most because it still has 'jangttokttae' and a courtyard, which reminds me of my early years because I lived in a hanok." "Jangttokttae" is an outside space where a series of traditional jars used to ferment or simply store comestible goods, such as kimchi, soybeans, bean and red pepper paste, are gathered. Her colleague Kwon Yoon-yeon agreed, saying that she was surprised to learn through the tour that there are so many beautiful small structures in Seochon. "Looking at the poem posted on the site of Yun's home, I made up my mind to take a rather simple stance on life as the poem tells." After the site of Yun's home, the tourists arrived at Suseongdong Valley on the foot of Mount Inwang, the final destination of the half-day tour. "This valley was one of the eight major places of the Jangdong neighborhood depicted in Gyeomjae Jeong Seon's paintings," Hwang Byong-kee, a research fellow at Seoul National University's Humanities Institute, said as he gave a brief lecture on the history of Seochon as the tourists gathered at a pavilion on the hill overlooking the center of Seoul. He was one of the two guides of the tour along with Ko. Jangdong was the former name of the Seochon area where the greatest landscape painter of the late Joseon period was born and spent most of his life. "Imagine how Seoul looked in the past, although the view is not that good now because of the forest of buildings," he said. Kim Eun-jin, a company worker who lives in Seoul's Songpa Ward, said the tour was really impressive, although it was not her first trip to Seochon. "I've been here just once before, but because it was winter, I couldn't see this beautiful scenery. This time I could see much more than before partly because it is spring and because the guides provided information on every corner of the neighborhood." Her 12-year-old son Lee Seung-hyo said that it was fun to tour the labyrinth of alleys, which are rare in Seoul. "I want to come again if I have another chance." Organizers say they plan to expand the program to include foreign residents of the city in the future. The current program does not provide guided tours in foreign languages. "I think this is what they need," Lee, chief of the Center for Story Managing, said. "Foreigners want to hear stories of Seoul like what were in these alleys before and what meanings they have for this region." sshim@yna.co.kr (END)

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