우리의 서울 이야기

Several trips this week--one of the first (in a long series) of "branding" Seoul--우리의 서울 이야기--which bills itself as a "talk concert concerned with establishing Seoul's city brand".   The first talk seemed rather uncontroversial: is Seoul a "mountain" city or a "river" city?

서울 마을 미디어

The folks at 서울 마을미디어 conceiving of various projects as linked nodes in a network--similar to the metro, in a way, but I wonder about the edges linking these vertices.  What are they?

  

고진감래(苦盡甘來)

고진감래(苦盡甘來, Bitter, Sweet, Seoul) (2014) is a montage film made up of the 150 or so winning entries in a film contest on representing Seoul ("Seoul, Our Movie").  I remember the contest from summer of 2013, an, given that various KPOP stars plugged it, it looked (to me) like a tourism brochure rather than a serious project.  But the resulting film, directed by 박찬욱 (the famed director of "Old Boy") and his son, 박찬경, this seems altogether more dark and critical--while still giving lip service to the tourism industry.

The darker bits: contrasting 

북정마을

I'm still concerned over the fate of this neighborhood abutting Seoul's old, city walls (한양 도성). That said, Twitter does seem to reflect my concerns.  A recent search turned up mostly references to the irritating, SBS reality show, "Roommate".  Here's the network picture--not pretty.

동대문역사문화공원

Just a couple of photos from today.

First, the mammoth, Dongdaemun Design Plaza (동대문 디자인플라자) or DDP:

Second, the archaeological site preserved (sort of) at the center of the Plaza:

The sign: "Let's protect our valuable cultural heritage"