In the future...
Urban ecology projects in Jongno 3-ga
Seoul Metropolitan Government is planning to regenerate Donwhamun-ro. By 2018, it will invest over 20 million dollars to change Donwhamun-ro. It will change a return lane for cars into a road for pedestrians like in the picture above. Visitors can walk through Donwhamun-ro and go to ChangDeokGung palace. Also Seoul Metropolitan Government will support money for shops around Donwhamun-ro to remodel its signboards and other features.
In the entrance of the road(near ChangDeokGung palace), ‘Seoul Donwhamun Traditional Theater’(국악당) was built last year(There had been gas station since 2012 in the same spot), and Korean Folk Song Museum will be built until october 2019. It is a part of the plan to renovate Donwhamun-ro.
Seoul Metropolitan Government is also planning to develop Seosunla road. This road is much more obsolete than Donwhamun-ro. There are old restaurants(대폿집) which sell Makgeolli for one dollar. This road has a potential to lure people. It has a long and beautiful stone wall on the right side, which is the west end of Jongmyo Shrine. Seoul Metropolitan Government plans to make this road specialized in jewelry workshops. Seoul tries to lure young artisans in this road. Seoul will also support money to renovate old Korean traditional houses.
In the entrance of the road(near ChangDeokGung palace), ‘Seoul Donwhamun Traditional Theater’(국악당) was built last year(There had been gas station since 2012 in the same spot), and Korean Folk Song Museum will be built until october 2019. It is a part of the plan to renovate Donwhamun-ro.
Seoul Metropolitan Government is also planning to develop Seosunla road. This road is much more obsolete than Donwhamun-ro. There are old restaurants(대폿집) which sell Makgeolli for one dollar. This road has a potential to lure people. It has a long and beautiful stone wall on the right side, which is the west end of Jongmyo Shrine. Seoul Metropolitan Government plans to make this road specialized in jewelry workshops. Seoul tries to lure young artisans in this road. Seoul will also support money to renovate old Korean traditional houses.
Finally, In the future of seosun-ra-gil Gil. Seosunra Gil is the world's only cluster of jewellery industry. Jongno is one of the few markets in the world capable of manufacturing, wholesaling, retailing, and distributing jewellery. It occupies 40% of the jewellery industry.
The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced the opening of its Seoul Jewelry Center 2, which is a space centred on the residential support such as product sales and exhibitions of new jewellery designers. We will present the basic direction and operational concept of operation, and plan to select the operator based on the open competition method. Business plan, space creation, public relations and marketing, and manpower supply and demand management. The city will provide 2 centre spaces free of charge, but will pay a portion of the revenue to the city of Seoul. The rest is attributed to the operator and is given as an incentive to activate the operation. A competent inter-organizational consortium is also possible to create synergies through the convergence of specialized management methods in each sector. |
Although Dansungsa lost its power as the center of new culture and cultural development, it is trying to continue to stay as memorial place as the origin of the Korean act and movie and as the starting point of the Korean movie wave. By reopening the theater at B1 floor of Dansung Gold department building, it will keep screening various movies. Also, across Dansung building, CGV Picadili 1958 would also try to screening movie, at the same time, catching young generations to follow the flow of Korean movie industry and culture, so that Jongno could be the connection line between the older generation and younger generation. Moreover, through Dansungsa and Picadili 1958, two generations could communicate with each other and understand the history of culture in Korea.
Jongno 3-ga is the place where people of all ages, statuses and identities are visiting with different purposes. Some of them come to buy wedding presents at jewelry stores, while some others to see the sights of cultural assets. Still others regularly spend most of their daytime there looking for their old and new friends around the parks. Of course, there are local residents and workers, too.
However, despite the diversity of visitors, the distinctions among them even cause people's exclusive impressions on each other. The graph on the left-side, based on the survey of a thousand adults in Seoul, shows that 62.7% of them felt the parks around Jongno 3-ga as the place only for the elderly. Also, the second most people, accounting for 12.4%, considered that those places are dirty and dangerous due to the homeless. These negative impressions lead people to think that they belong to the different group and the different society from their social outcasts such as the elderly and the homeless. This can be one of the reasons that some social issues such as the prostitution of Bacchus ladies are still unsolved; people feel that the problems on the place where they visit are not their business, which keeps making blind spots in their society. Thus, we hope that Jongno 3-ga would change into the place which can embrace all social members in harmony.
However, despite the diversity of visitors, the distinctions among them even cause people's exclusive impressions on each other. The graph on the left-side, based on the survey of a thousand adults in Seoul, shows that 62.7% of them felt the parks around Jongno 3-ga as the place only for the elderly. Also, the second most people, accounting for 12.4%, considered that those places are dirty and dangerous due to the homeless. These negative impressions lead people to think that they belong to the different group and the different society from their social outcasts such as the elderly and the homeless. This can be one of the reasons that some social issues such as the prostitution of Bacchus ladies are still unsolved; people feel that the problems on the place where they visit are not their business, which keeps making blind spots in their society. Thus, we hope that Jongno 3-ga would change into the place which can embrace all social members in harmony.