Spotlight on...SeoulI 43Main:
Sunset along
Cheonggyecheon
Streambusinesstraveller.asia JUNE 2016
eoul’s recent history has been
marked by rapid modernisation, an
eager acceptance of technological
advances and urban growth on an
impressive scale. Now a huge, sprawling
conurbation, many of its most high-
profile developments can be found south of Hangang
(Han River): the 123-storey Lotte World Tower is close
to completion – at 556 metres it is the highest building
in Korea – and there are expansion plans for the COEX
district too, where Hyundai has purchased a huge
plot of land opposite the enormous convention and
shopping centre, and plans to build hotels, more events
and retail space, etc.
However, in the city’s CBD, located within the
historic city walls of Seoul north of the Han, plenty of
growth is happening too – albeit in a less grandiose
fashion. By using a relatively recent – and now
much appreciated – addition to the city’s impressive
collection of parks, it’s possible to bisect the busy,
skyscraper-filled downtown area, and get a sense of
Seoul’s multifarious appeal.HISTORICAL SOURCE
In Korea’s preindustrial era, when Seoul was a fraction
of its current size, a stream meandered through its
centre, used by wives to wash clothes, and by lovers
for intimate liaisons. Its name was Cheonggyecheon –
today it is commonly referred to simply as “the Stream”.
After the Korean War, however, things changed:
the Stream became lined with shantytowns and
increasingly polluted and dirty. In 1958 a road was
built over it, followed by an elevated freeway in 1976.
The Stream was forgotten in the rush towards an
industrialised future, and the whole area became
something of an eyesore, shabby and filled with refuse.
At the turn of the millennium Lee Myung-bak,
whose construction company had actually built the
freeway, made restoring the Stream a major part of
his campaign to become Seoul’s mayor. (Lee went
on to become the country’s president.) In 2003, as
city mayor, he gave the green light for the US$360
million reclamation project to begin: the freeway was
torn down, the surface road ripped up, and pumping
stations installed to bring 30 million gallons (113,562
cubic metres) of water from the Han River, ensuring a
regular flow that the original stream had never had.
Cheonggyecheon reopened to the public in 2005 as
a linear parkway that stretches from Cheonggye Plaza
all the way through central Seoul to Dongdaemun and
beyond. Set below street level, more than 20 bridges
span the Stream’s total length; its walking paths and
walls are concrete or stone – though trees have been
planted in many stretches to offset this apparent
“green space” contradiction.