I’ve been wandering around Seoul on weekends. It’s good exercise, and I need to buy food anyway. I mostly head to neighborhoods with a traditional market or a supermarket. Gongneung has a Chinese restaurant that’s supposed to be good, so I went there.
 
 
With the Gyeongchun Line Forest Trail being developed, stylish shops have been popping up.
 
Sangsang Gwajajeom, a pastry shop

Stylish is nice, but for a middle-aged guy going in alone, the bar is a bit high…
 
 
 
Roughly like this… 

It was only finished recently, so it still feels a bit rough around the edges, but it’ll get better with time.
 
 
 
 
The traditional market
 

 
Life feels more settled when there’s a traditional market around. Supermarkets are better for packaged goods, but for fresh food nothing beats a traditional market.
 
 
The park
 

 
The walking paths are well laid out too.
 
 
 
The park
 

 
 
 
 
 
The park

 
 
 
The park
 

 
 
 
The bakery had sold out..
 

 
I was thinking of dropping in, but they’d closed early..
 
There was a lot of noise for a while about gentrification being a problem, but market forces are finding another way that everyone can live with: trendy streets springing up all over the city. It wasn’t long ago that Hongdae and Gyeongnidan-gil were the big thing, and Gyeongnidan-gil has already been wrecked.. No shop will move into a place that doesn’t make money, and no customers will go looking for it either.. Along with that, I think the standard of Korea’s small businesses will rise as well. Looks like my neighborhood explorations will continue for a while.

한국어로 읽기日本語で読む