For my latest Korea Times article, I examined how the development of the Magok area – which was fields of rice and vegetables when I first moved nearby in 2003 – has influenced the way in which the nearby Yangcheon area promotes its history. I’ll be leading a walk for RAS Korea through the local historical sites and museums that will end in Magok this coming Saturday; an earlier article of mine examines many of the sites we'll be visiting.
Magok has changed a great deal since I first encountered it. Here is a shot from June 2010 when the land was being raised over former farmland and a lake park was first constructed. (While I knew that the lake eventually became smaller, what I didn't know - until I looked at older satellite photos on Kakao Map, was that in 2016 the entire lake was drained and possibly filled in and then shifted eastward.)
As I noted here, in 2009 I visited the still under construction Magongnaru Station, which looked like this:
A few years ago I visited a friend in Magok and we went down escalators in a big shopping / restaurant area and walked straight into this station. It was with some shock that I realized the wall on the left above had been removed and connected to the newly-built officetel / shopping center.
Another shot from 2009 shows a solid wall in the center of the photo.
And here's a shot from a week or so ago. There are now windows there that open onto a huge below-ground open plaza:
And needless to say, this looks rather different than the fields of 16 years ago:
What was odd was how quiet this was, just a block from the lake park. There was no one here on a Saturday afternoon.
At any rate, it's been quite an experience seeing a entire section of the city arise from the earth over 16 years.
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