Participants of the “Cheonggyecheon–Euljiro Tour” meet with technicians at a temporary building. / Reporter Woo Hye-rim

At 3 p.m. on September 30, a group of about ten young people gathered at a street corner in Euljiro, central Seoul. When Park Eun-seon, director of the art collective “Listen to the City,” gestured toward the distance, their eyes followed. “This area used to be filled with traditional hanok houses,” she said, pointing at where high-rise apartment buildings now stood. Inside the alley, hardware shops with shuttered doors and small machine workshops were crammed together.

“Listen to the City,” an artists’ and researchers’ collective founded in 2009, organized a “Cheonggyecheon–Euljiro Tour” that day, walking through neighborhoods currently being demolished for redevelopment. The group invited contributors who had helped with the recent publication of “The Makers of Sanlim-dong,” a book featuring interviews with local technicians. Participants confronted both the traces left behind by those displaced and the lives of those still remaining.

The area became a large-scale redevelopment zone in 2014 after the approval of the amended “Sewoon Redevelopment Promotion Plan.” Once crowded with manufacturers and distributors in industries like electronics, metals, and printing, the district is slated to be replaced with high-rise residential and office complexes. Demolition began in 2018, forcing out some 400 tool shops from Ipjeong-dong’s Tool Alley overnight. In response, merchants and citizens staged a tent sit-in for over a year, demanding measures for coexistence from the Seoul Metropolitan Government and Jung-gu Office. As a compromise, a public rental commercial facility, the “Win-Win Knowledge Industry Center,” was built on land owned by Korea Land and Housing Corporation (LH) in the Sewoon 5-2 zone, along with a temporary building near Cheonggye Arcade. While some merchants relocated there to continue their businesses, most left Cheonggyecheon Stream, where they had worked for decades.

The young participants said the tour made them reflect on the direction of redevelopment. Mr. Heo, 43, said, “Korea develops everything in a uniform way, destroying existing values and erasing its unique characteristics.” Another participant, Cha Ye-jin, 26, said, “I often saw Cheonggyecheon redevelopment being promoted as a ‘grand urban project,’ but I didn’t realize what was disappearing beneath the surface.”

The tour concluded with a visit to technicians who had recently moved into the temporary building near Cheonggye Arcade. Lee Jang-seon, head of Wooju Precision, welcomed the group warmly. The young visitors inspected press machines, took photos, and jotted notes. One participant, Jang Jae-hyuk, 26, reflected, “Rather than constructing mechanically, it’s important to understand how people live in a given space. I hope more people come to see that there’s an ecosystem of small factories interlinked within the city.”