Sewoon Plaza

Sewoon Plaza, 세운상가 (Seun Sangga), is a mixed residential-commercial complex that originally consisted of eight buildings constructed on four plots of land aligned along a kilometer-long strip that stretches from a point opposite Jongmyo Shrine in the north to a point near Chungmuro Station in the south. Construction began in 1966, with all but one of the buildings open to the public by 1972.

Four construction companies were tapped to erect two buildings each: Hyundai, Daelim, Sampoong, and Sinseong. From north to south, the building names were:

Beginnings

The land on which Sewoon Plaza was constructed was given its shape by the occupying Imperial Japanese government in the closing days of WWII. In early 1945, concerned that the US might bomb Seoul, they demolished everything along a strip of land approximately a kilometer long and fifty meters wide to act as a firebreak. After the Korean War, a shanty town grew up in the empty space and nearby Cheonggye Stream as displaced residents constructed makeshift homes. It soon became a site for illicit activities such as prostitution.

During the 60s, Seoul underwent massive redevelopment. The shanty towns were demolished and the residents forcibly relocated to other areas of Seoul. Seoul Mayor Kim Hyeon Ok proposed a mixed commercial-residential complex for construction on the former firebreak. The architectural firm owned by Kim Swoo Geun (his name being 김수근, the Swoo should be more appropriately romanized as Soo, but it was likely his personal preference). Kim would go on to become arguably the most important Korean architect of the 20th century. Among his numerous designs, Seoul’s Olympic Stadium and US Embassy are perhaps the most widely known.

Each block of two buildings was assigned to a different construction firm, one of Hyundai, Daelim, Sampoong, and Sinseong. The original design called for a continuous skyway connecting all eight buildings, and each block was to be named based characters from the Korean alphabet (ㄱ, ㄴ, ㄷ, ㄹ), like A, B, C, D in English. For example, 세운상가 가동 (Seun Sangga Gadong), 세운상가 나동 (Seun Sangga Nadong), and so on. Ultimately, due to a lack of coordination among the construction firms and unsynchronized construction dates, these plans were not fully realized. The skyway was only partially completed, and the alphabet-based names were abandonded in favor of each building having its own name. One building in each pair was named for the company that built it.

Excluding the Poongjeon Hotel, each building consisted of an arcade of shops on the lower floors, a couple of floors of office space above them, and several floors of luxury apartments above those. Seun Sangga was the first to be completed, with approval for public usage coming in November 1967. Most of the buildings were fully open to the public by 1972. The exception was the Poongjeon Hotel, which didn’t receive authorization to open until 1982. The source I most heavily relied on was unable to determine an actual construction date for the hotel, but notes:

…there are opinions that the actual completion of construction was earlier, and so it is hard to be certain. Supplementary construction causes a new approval for usage so the final date may have been delayed for this reason.

Rise and Fall

Even before the shanty towns were demolished, a small community of electronics workshops had grown organically in the surrounding area. With the opening of Seun Sangga, it naturally became a focal point for an expanding electronics market. So much so that it became known as Sewoon Electronics Arcade. Throughout the 70s, it was the electronics shopping mecca.

In the original vision, the entirety of Sewoon Plaza was to become a shopping mecca selling a variety of goods. That vision failed to materialize. Myeongdong started to gain popularity as a shopping district in the 70s and had eclipsed Sewoon Plaza by the 80s. Another electronics market began to form near Yongsan station, and by 1987, Yongsan Electronics Market had become the number one place to go for electronics. It was much larger than Sewoon, covering an area comprised of several buildings.

The residential aspect of Sewoon was also eclipsed by developments elsewhere as high-rise apartments went up around the city. Gangnam District in particular was a hot spot of apartment construction. It wasn’t long before Sewoon’s apartments were no longer considered luxurious.

Consequently, Sewoon Plaza began to decline even before it had reached its full potential. The decks on the buildings became a haven for vendors selling black market items from the US military bases along with other illicit materials, pornography and banned music LPs in particular. By 1979, there was already talk of redevelopment.

Redevelopment

The first serious plans to demolish Sewoon Plaza were developed in the late 90s, but were stylimed by the 1998 economic crisis. There was subsequently very little movement until Oh Se Hoon became Seoul Mayor. During his first term, he initiated plans to demolish all of the buildings of Sewoon Plaza and replace them with a green space bordered by high-rise apartment and office buildings. This resulted in the demolition of Hyundai Sangga in 2008 before the project was ultimately scrapped, primarily due to the Global Financial Crisis.

Oh Se Hoon resigned in 2011 over an unrelated issue early in his second term as mayor. His successor, Park Won Soon, announced the Sewoon Plaza Regeneration Project in 2015, which later became known as the re:Sewoon Project. The core concept was to regenerate rather than demolish and rebuild. It was a multi-faceted, two-phase project. Its two most notable facets were to restore and fully complete the skyway, and to make Sewoon Plaza the center of the local maker economy. Phase One was completed in 2017. Phase Two was projected to end by 2020, but it suffered repeated delays until it finally reached the finish line in 2022.

Initially, it appeared that the goal of sparking the maker community was having an impact, as young makers opened workshops in what once were the apartments of Seun Sangga. The area surrounding Cheonggye Sangga and Daelim Sangga, along the street named Euljiro, saw an influx of young business owners opening restaurants, bars, and cafes, causing the area to become trendy and earn the moniker Hipjiro.

Yet even as the regeneration project was underway, some buildings in the vicinity were demolished to make way for new high rises. And despite the initial optimism and 110 billion KRW spent on the new skyway, only 5-17% of the projected 13,000 daily pedestrians were using it. Moreover, it seems to have become an obstacle to full usage of the buildings, with visitor numbers estimated at 50% of pre-project levels. Some prominent maker shops that had opened in refurbished spaces eventually packed up and left.

Park Won Soon committed suicide in 2020 in the wake of legal troubles. Oh Se Hoon regained the mayoral office in a 2021 by-election, and then was reelected to a full term in the regular 2022 election. It wasn’t long before he announced a new Sewoon Plaza redevelopment project quite similar to the one he’d pushed in his first term: the Sewoon buildings were to be demolished and replaced with a green space surrounded by high-rise apartment and office buildings potentially 50 stories high.

As of May 2024, the project was still in the early review stages. In 2008, UNESCO threatened to revoke the World Heritage status of Jongmyo Shrine, located across the street from Seun Sangga to the north, if its value was diminished by the construction of high-rise buildings as a result of the initial redevelopment plans. In light of the new plans, they have asked for a report on the project’s impact on Jongmyo to reevaluate its status going forward. Mayor Oh said in an April 2024 interview that if they find the new plans unacceptable, “we can certainly persuade through discussions.”

Additional Resources

I’ve consulted a number of sources about Seun Sangga, both English and Korean. Most of them are repetitive, add nothing new, and in some cases proved inaccurate. The sources listed below seem to be the most reliable. The last one in the list provides additional context.

Mike from Korea References