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Korea economically in the late 1970s.) Myounggu Kang, an urban planner I spoke with at Seoul University, now hopes to pass on what the country learned to the next generation of planners in rapidly expanding cities in Africa, Asia, South America and the Middle East. “The now forgotten urban planners from decades ago should be national heroes,” Kang tells me. “They helped lead this city from ruins to riches. We hope the world can learn from them.” Nowadays, with Korea’s prosperity cemented, there’s been an important shift in Seoul’s values; the city has moved from pure functionalism—and dire necessity—to form, livability and aesthetics. Seoul was named World Design Capital in 2010 by a prominent alliance of industrial designers and has become a
built out of extreme necessity—made to be functional, not beautiful. The postwar period saw a huge influx of people from the countryside; the city now contains ten million people, 20 percent of the population of all South Korea. From 1960 to 1990 Seoul gained roughly 300,000 new residents per year. It needed to worry more about how these newcomers would survive than how aesthetically pleasing their environment would be. This transformation from third- world poverty to a booming export- oriented economy, coupled with extreme wealth, massive population growth and expanded global cultural power, means that Seoul isn’t just a phenomenon in its own right; it’s also a model for cities in China, India and Brazil trying to cope with many of the same problems Seoul faced. (South Korea only eclipsed North
city decimated by the Korean War to one of the most prosperous and high-tech places in the world. In the past decade there’s also been an explosion of international interest in Korean popular culture, especially catchy K-pop music, soapy TV dramas and edgy cinema, making the most famous Korean singers, stars and directors household names everywhere from Tokyo to Beijing. Koreans even have a name for this blossoming of foreign interest in their homegrown pop culture: hallyu, which means Korean wave. Korea has long been dwarfed by China and Japan, far more populous nations that have colonized the Korean Peninsula, and so this recent cultural hegemony has given Seoul residents a newfound confidence, even exuberance, in their city. Compared with the capitals of Japan and China, Seoul is, at first, a harder place to love, since much of it was
THIS SPREAD FROM LEFT Meat On Barbecue Grill, a popular street food in Myeong-Dong; Incheon, the Grand Fishery Market; The famous shopping streets of Myeong-dong
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EC Magazines | Summer Edition 2022
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