🎧 Yul's Korea Audio Guide
Seongsu-dong
Narrated in English with Korean phrases by YUL of KVIBE IDOLS.
🎵 Background music: Still in That Spring (그 봄에 머물러) — KVIBE IDOLS · Listen to the full song →
Full transcript
Annyeong, yeoreobun! It's Yul. Look around: red brick walls, giant old warehouses, and long lines of people waiting for coffee and pop-up stores. Welcome to Seongsu-dong, the place people call the Brooklyn of Seoul. But a few decades ago, this neighborhood sounded very different. Bang, bang, bang. Hammers!
In the 1970s, Seongsu was one of Seoul's busy factory areas, packed with workshops making shoes, leather goods, printing and car parts. Rent was cheap, so in the 1980s and 90s, shoemakers moved here from older shoe streets near Seoul Station and Myeongdong. At one point, Seongsu made over 80 percent of Korea's handmade shoes!
But here's the twist. From the 2000s, cheaper imports arrived, and many workshops went quiet. Empty buildings everywhere. So what happened? Artists and young designers walked in and said, wow, these spaces are perfect! One building, Daelim Changgo, was a rice mill in the 1970s and a factory warehouse in the 1990s. In 2011, it opened as a warehouse-style gallery cafe, and suddenly everyone wanted to drink coffee inside old brick factories. Now even luxury brands open pop-up stores here. From hammers to lattes. Daebak!
Yul's tip! Start at Seongsu Station and look for the handmade shoe street, where some artisans still make shoes by hand. Then walk to Seoul Forest, a big park that opened in 2005 on land that was once a royal hunting ground and later a horse racing track.
Next, let's go up, way up, to the tallest building in Korea. Kaja!
