#4k #walkingtour #korea
Gangnam-daero, the busy boulevard that runs south from the Han River to divide the affluent southern Seoul districts of Gangnam and Seocho, is highly commercial. The closer you get to Gangnam Station, the taller and more modern the buildings become. That makes for an interesting walk, but it's the streets behind all those buildings that I enjoy visiting most.

We start this walk in the bowels of Gangnam Station (Seoul Subway Line 2 & the Sinbundang Line), one of Seoul's busiest subway stops. The older Line 2 portion opened in 1982, but this section was opened in 2011 when Gangnam Station became the northern terminus of the new Sinbundang Line. Since then, the line has been expanded to reach Sinsa Station to the north, with plans to expand it north of the river.

We make our way up to the first basement level (00:42), where we find a shiny corridor lined with a variety of shops and restaurants. We get a quick look at some of them, then make our way to Gangnam-daero via Gate 6 (02:01). Once upon a time, Gate 6 was the northwesternmost gate that opened near the site of the old New York Bakery. If you were meeting someone at Gangnam Station back then, it was usually outside that shop, and you could always find a crowd of people waiting for someone to arrive. Since the expansion, that is now Gate 10, the bakery is long gone, and the "new" Gate 6 is one of several gates south of the intersection.

We make a U-turn out of the gate and head straight for the backstreets at the first right (02:40). We find more office buildings, and just ahead stand the mirror-surfaced buildings of "Samsung Town" (02:46), an office park housing the headquarters of several Samsung conglomerates. Samsung Town used to be located north of the Han River in central Seoul, but relocated here in 2007.

We turn south down Seocho-daero 78-gil where we find a number of shops and restaurants, the big office buildings of the boulevard rising to our left. During the daily lunch hour and in the early evening, this place is full of people. We're coming through half-an-hour after the lunch break, so all we see are a few stragglers and passers by like ourselves.

After we head west for a short distance, we come to a sudden change in scenery (06:19). Immediately in front of us are a couple of older high-rises (06:26), all that remain from a Woosung Apartment complex. They're dwarfed by the more modern Raemian apartments, a Samsung brand, that replaced another block of Woosung apartments just to their south. To the north, we get another glimpse of Samsung town (06:30).

We head south, and now we find we're surrounded primarily by residential buildings, many of them relatively new. It's easy to forget we're in the heart of one of Seoul's busiest commercial districts. We come to Saimdang-ro at 08:51, where the scenery has dramatically changed since I was last there. The old Youth Library building across the street has been replaced by a new one, and the old block of shorter Woosung Apartments, once a local landmark behind the library, have been replaced by another complex of towering Raemian apartments (construction began at some point in 2017 or 2018).

We find more residential buildings to our left as we continue south. To our right, the Raemians stretch a full block to Hyoryeong-ro (14:30), on the other side of which we find older, shorter buildings of the kind that used to dominate the area we just left behind. Continuing south, we are surrounded now primarily by older low-rise office buildings rather than residential properties, though we can see some low-rise apartments ("villas") down the side streets (as at 16:07).

In the midst of the old office buildings and scattered villas we find the site of an old grocery store, Harmony Mart (1957). I can't tell if it's closed permanently or just for the day, but I assume the former.

Finally, we come to the Southern Loop Road (23:39), where turning east we find more old buildings have been torn down and replaced, the restaurants at 24:29 the lone survivors. We continue around the corner to end our walk at Gate 1 of Yangjae Station (Seoul Subway Line 3 & Sinbundang Line).

ROUTE MAP:
[ Ссылка ]

META:
I filmed this on the afternoon of April 10, 2023, with an iPhone 11 on a DJI OM 5 in 4K @ 60 fps. The temperature was was around 18°C/65°F. I edited and rendered with DaVinci Resolve Studio 18.

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Gangnam Station Gate 6
02:01 Gangnam-daero
02:40 Gangnam-daero 55-gil
03:02 Seocho-daero 78-gil
05:23 Gangnam-daero 53-gil
06:25 Seocho-daero 74-gil
08:51 Saimdang-ro
09:48 Hyoryeong-ro 77-gil
14:30 Hyoryeong-ro
15:20 Nambusunhwan-ro 347-gil
23:39 Nambusunhwan-ro
25:20 Yangjae Station Gate 1

Seoul Subway Line 2
[ Ссылка ]

Sinbundang Line
[ Ссылка ]

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