We’re celebrating Seoul Week on ExploreMetro! We’ve teamed up with Seoul Sub→urban to bring you stories and pictures from around Seoul. Every day this week we’ll bring you one of their profiles of a Seoul Subway station, today it’s Bulgwang (불광역) .

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Bulgwang (불광역)

Line 3 – Station #322, Line 6 – Station #612

One of the first things you’ll probably notice when you exit Bulgwang Station is that the air is just a little bit more breathable here than in other parts of Seoul, and being so close to the edge of the city and to the mountains that makes sense.  The most dominating feature of the neighborhood is Bukhan Mountain (북한산), especially nearby Suri Peak (수리봉), rising up northeast of the station, though the hulking 2001 Outlet/Kim’s Club/CGV building attached to Exit 6 is trying its best to change that.

Across the street from that building is what looks – with its gunmetal gray exterior, roof curved at just the right height and angle, and bare bulbs visible through the windows – like an old-fashioned passenger train.  What it actually is, is Jeil Market (제일시장) just steps from Exit 7.  We’ve gotten to the point in this project where our usual reaction is, ‘Oh.  Another market,’ because in all honesty there’s often not much that differentiates one neighborhood market from the next (and there are a lot more in the city than I ever expected), and after a while you start running out of new things to write/photograph.  But the Bulgwang market is, frankly, pretty unique.

To begin with, it’s unavoidable.  Step out of the exit and just in front of you the sidewalk has been commandeered in a way that would give American zoning regulators fits.  Beneath that gray metal and plastic covering, businesses on the inside of the sidewalk extend displays out onto it, and on the sidewalk’s outside smaller vendors have set up stands and tarps.  Old women sell plastic bags of kimchi and butchers offer Styrofoam packs of coagulated blood.  There are eels, steamed corn, blocks of tofu, and crates of chicken feet on ice.  So if you want to walk south from this side of the station, you have to run the gauntlet a little bit, for about three blocks.

After doing so, I turned right into a side street and wandered for a bit through a calm neighborhood of four- or five-story buildings.  The occasional breeze disturbed the hot heavy air, but otherwise it was so quiet that I could actually hear the low hum of a barber pole as it spun, and I thought of a guy in the market selling potatoes whose t-shirt just said ‘SLOWNESS.’

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We’re celebrating Seoul Week on ExploreMetro! We’ve teamed up with Seoul Sub→urban to bring you stories and pictures from around Seoul. Every day this week we’ll bring you one of their profiles of a Seoul Subway station, today it’s Jamwon (잠원역) .

Don’t forget you can download Explore Seoul for iPhone for just $0.99 this week!

Jamwon (잠원역)

Line 3 – Station #338

Expectations for Jamwon were pretty low.  A pre-trip look at the map didn’t show anything of distinction except the local section of the Hangang Park.  A Google search turned up precisely nothing.  And you know those signs they have in the subway stations, the ones with a neighborhood map that list what’s outside each exit?  Well, the Jamwon sign went something like: apartment, apartment, apartment, school, apartment, apartment, apartment.

And to be frank, that’s pretty much what we found there.  But it also doesn’t give any sort of indication of how pleasant the neighborhood is or of how much I enjoyed the visit.  Granted, things were influenced a bit by the absolutely perfect Indian summer day Seoul was getting when we went, but Jamwon would still have been an unexpected surprise regardless.

To begin with, if there is a subway station with a nicer setting in Seoul I am unaware of it.  After three years of riding the train here, the notion that I could exit a station and come out on anything but a major street surrounded by convenience stores and crowds no longer even occurred to me.

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We’re celebrating Seoul Week on ExploreMetro! We’ve teamed up with Seoul Sub→urban to bring you stories and pictures from around Seoul. Every day this week we’ll bring you one of their profiles of a Seoul Subway station, today it’s Nambu Bus Terminal (남부터미널역) .

Don’t forget you can download Explore Seoul for iPhone for just $0.99 this week!

Nambu Bus Terminal (남부터미널역)

Line 3 – Station #341

Originally called the Cargo Truck Terminal, Nambu Bus Terminal in Seocho-gu will be well familiar with anyone who’s used the metro to get to the Seoul Arts Center (예술의전당) complex at the foot ofUmyeon Mountain (우면산).  And we’ll get to that shortly (or, rather, Liz will) but first, a brief tour of the neighborhood.

Because it seemed to offer the least possibility in terms of things of interest we started the afternoon going east down Hyoryeong-ro (효령로) from Exit 3.  This turned out to be a fairly accurate presupposition, not just for Hyoryeong-ro east of Nambu Terminal Station, but for the majority of the surrounding neighborhood as well, which displayed quite plainly the bluntness of the south side’s development.  Both Hyoryreong-ro and Umyeon-ro (우면로), running north-south, were lined with 10 to 20 story office and apartment towers, about which even their residents would be hard-pressed to say something.  We strolled through the back streets north and south of Hyoryreong-ro for a bit, and although there looked to be some nice brick homes just north of the avenue, the neighborhood felt perfectly perfunctory.

The best evaluation came when, not five minutes after we’d stepped into the actual Bus Terminal, Liz walked up to me and said, ‘This place is already more interesting than the entire neighborhood.’

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We’re celebrating Seoul Week on ExploreMetro! We’ve teamed up with Seoul Sub→urban to bring you stories and pictures from around Seoul. Every day this week we’ll bring you one of their profiles of a Seoul Subway station, today it’s Yeouinaru (여의나루역) .

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Yeouinaru (여의나루역)

Line 5 – Station #527

Because the western side of the number 5 line crosses the Han River by a deep tunnel and not a bridge, Yeouinaru Station, at 27.5 meters below sea level, is the lowest subway station in Korea.  Liz and I visited with our friend Casey this past Saturday, and the area was absolutely buzzing with people out to see Yeouido’s cherry blossom festival.  Families and couples crowded the station, and a long line stretched out the door of the women’s bathroom, mirrored by a bored-looking queue of waiting husbands and boyfriends.

Outside, enterprising ajummas and ajeosshis were set up all around the station hawking beondaeggi, corndogs, and tteok to the seasonal tourists.  One grandmother hawked kimbap with a rolling pitch that had the cadence and panache of a ballpark hot dog vendor.

All along Yeouisa-ro (여의사로) the trees were in full bloom, a soft emergence of pink and white.

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We’re celebrating Seoul Week on ExploreMetro! We’ve teamed up with Seoul Sub→urban to bring you stories and pictures from around Seoul. Every day this week we’ll bring you one of their profiles of a Seoul Subway station, today it’s Dapsimni (답십리역) .

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Dapsimni (답십리역)

Line 5 – Station #542

Tucked between Cheonhodae-ro (천호대로) and Cheonggyecheon (청계천) on the southwest side of Dapsimni Station is the little neighborhood of Yongdapdong (용답동).  Before getting to the moderately well-known antique markets on the opposite side of the avenue, Liz and I decided to pop in to this area for a look-see.  It was pleasantly busy on a Saturday afternoon, people out and about doing weekend neighborhood things: buying groceries, doing a bit of shopping, or just strolling about.

Down one street outside Exit 5 a modified truck was delivering live seafood to a restaurant.  A man in gumboots was standing in the bed, scooping fish out of large coolers and depositing them in the display aquariums outside the eatery.  His partner was running hoses built in to the truck to the curbside storm drain, getting rid of unnecessary water now that their merchandise had been unloaded.  Neither Liz nor I had seen this draining process before and both thought it was pretty neat – one of those little bits of ingenuity that you never think of but that when you see it seems both obvious and modestly remarkable.

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We’re celebrating Seoul Week on ExploreMetro! We’ve teamed up with Seoul Sub→urban to bring you stories and pictures from around Seoul. Every day this week we’ll bring you one of their profiles of a Seoul Subway station, today it’s Nonhyeon (논현역) .

Don’t forget you can download Explore Seoul for iPhone for just $0.99 this week!

Nonhyeon (논현역)

Line 7 – Station #732

Arriving at Nonhyeon at noon, we emerged from the station to find the morning’s rains stopped and a bright midday sun glinting off puddles and still-wet street signs.  What had looked like it would be a gloomy, damp outing an hour ago had been transformed into the perfect weather for Nonhyeon-dong’s signature sport: armoire hunting.

From Exit 1 or Exit 8, all the way down Hakdong-ro to Hakdong Station runs Nonhyeon Furniture Street.  For several blocks both sides of the avenue are lined with almost nothing but furniture stores.  Most are of the high-end variety, which you would expect just south of the Sinsa-Apgujeong-Cheongdam golden triangle.

A number of stores carry domestically made products or furniture whose style reflects Asian influence.  The most eye-catching of these was Tongyeongchilgi (통영칠기) where enormous lacquered chests, wardrobes, and armoires with mother-of-pearl inlay were on display in the front window.

Most shops, though, seem to supply imported pieces or work that is heavily cued by European design.  This predilection is reflected in a quick scan of a number of the stores’ names: F. Angelico, Maison Francaise, Italiano, Leicht, Giotto.  Most of these places had classy, elegant furniture in classy, elegant buildings, but we also came across the occasional Old World mistake.

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We’re celebrating Seoul Week on ExploreMetro! We’ve teamed up with Seoul Sub→urban to bring you stories and pictures from around Seoul. Every day this week we’ll bring you one of their profiles of a Seoul Subway station, today it’s Dongdaemun (동대문역) .

Don’t forget you can download Explore Seoul for iPhone for just $0.99 this week!

Dongdaemun Station (동대문역)

Line 1 – Station #128, Line 4 – Station #421

It begins the moment you step off the subway.  There, on the platform, a man calls out to passengers, hawking the belts laid out in compartmentalized boxes at his feet.  Before you exit the station you’ll pass more people doing the same – with bags, with clothes, with battery-operated toys that flash and clatter – and then you go up the steps and you’re in Dongdaemun, where all this (and seemingly everything else) is happening, all the time.

Acres of wholesale markets pull in old-timers in search of bargains, while the malls that are the wellspring of Korean fashion summon the young and style-conscious.  Sleek stores and developments coexist amicably with the gritty shops and restaurants that have occupied the innumerable back alleys for decades.  Dongdaemun combines the crusty insouciance of the dockyards with the pulsing strut of the catwalk.  Nowhere else in Seoul is quite like it.

The neighborhood is anchored by the eponymous Dongdaemun (동대문) (Great East Gate) (Exit 6) or, more formally, Heunginjimun (흥인지문) (Gate of Rising Benevolence).  One of Joseon-era Seoul’s four main gates, it was originally built in 1396, though the current structure dates from an 1869 reconstruction.  Besides being a beautiful example of traditional Korean architecture it serves as a useful reference point amid the often hectic surroundings.

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