Future Asian Space: Projecting the Urban Space of New East Asia

Chapter 3: The Paradox of Public Space in the Korean Metropolis

Sung Hong Kim 31 Chapter 3 The Paradox of Public Space in the Korean Metropolis Sung Hong Kim 1. INTRODUCTION Seoul, the capital city of South Korea, presents a peculiar urban landscape to outsiders. It appears neither traditional, postcolonial nor modern seen from the canonical definitions and historical perspectives of EuroAmerican architecture. To say that it is eclectic and hybrid is perhaps an understatement. While it took Europe and North America over 150 years of urban and architectural transformation to arrive today at the modern Western city, this transformation has largely been compressed and thrust upon this 500-year-old Korean metropolis in a handful of decades. Kang Hong Bin, a former Vice Mayor of the Seoul Metropolitan Government , once noted that Seoul’s public appearance is the by-product of the paradoxical combination of “too much planning” and “too little planning.”1 An understanding of this statement and indeed of the state of public space in Korea requires a careful uncovering of the many layers of foundation upon which public space has been built. History, politics, economics and technology each have had their trowel in the mix. 2. HISTORY AND POLITICS: THREE INFLUENCES When founded as the capital of the Joseon dynasty in the 14th century, Seoul was constructed on the canons of Chinese cities, although it did not embody their strict principles. Geometrical regularity and symmetry applied only to the main streets, palaces, royal shrines, and government buildings. Behind the major streets, the city was constructed on a trial and error basis from the perspective of modern planning. The royal THE PARADOX OF PUBLIC SPACE 32 families and high-ranking officials occupied the most privileged spaces in the city, usually deeply recessed from the main streets (Figure 1). Alleys were produced as middle-class officials and artisans later filled remaining areas. The placement of shops on the main streets concealed the inner residential space. The result was the formation of a unique spatial pattern, with shops to the front and houses to the back in a linear and planar configuration. This horizontal juxtaposition marked a division between the upper and lower ranks of society, where the ruling class commanded the privileged space while consigning merchants to an extremely limited territory adjacent to but never within the sacred area. Although the main street housed merchant shops, it was not distinctively “commercial” in the manner of medieval European or Chinese cities. It was rather a setting for stately display. The commoners receded from the main street and took their places as spectators instead of participants in everyday urban life. Buying and selling on the main street did not serve to make the city’s economy a public event. Hence, Seoul’s old shop streets are not comparable to the medieval market streets in European towns, where a direct link between the private domain (the home or place of work) and the public life of the town were formed. And while the planning principles of Kaifeng in the Chinese Northern Song dynasty had major influences on the foundation of Seoul, there is much dissimilarity between these two as well. A painting of Kaifeng’s urban scene is in sharp contrast to the picture of Seoul’s immense boulevard that does not reveal intimate commercial activities. The shop architecture was to be controlled, managed, embellished, and seen, but not participated in. The shop was the architectural façade of the city; it was the city’s “paper folding screen,” a decorative panel with paintings, calligraphy and embroidery set in a traditional Korean house. J.B. Jackson once quoted Spengler in saying that “[the houses] in all Western cities turn their façades, their faces, and in all Eastern cities turn their backs, blank wall and railing, towards the street.”2 While this rightly speaks to the Figure 1: A model of Seoul, 1894 distinction between introversion and extroversion, a closer look at the Joseon Dynasty’s Seoul additionally reveals the sheer wall of architecture that existed between the front and the back. This space, which was as much governmental as it was commercial, essentially encapsulated the public into secluded urban areas, in sharp contrast with the piazza or agora in European cities, which were purposely carved out to bring the public together in the middle of the urban fabric. The collapse of the Joseon Dynasty eventually led to other influences on Korea’s conception of public space. It is important...