HS Seoul Color Park Opens
By Kwon Mee-yoo
Staff Reporter
To publicize the colors symbolizing Seoul's tradition and its modern characteristics, and make them more familiar to citizens, Seoul City has opened the Seoul Color Park under the southern end of Mapo Bridge.
It came more than a year after the city designated 10 colors to symbolize the city's characteristics. Each encapsulates a distinct aspect of the 600-year-old traditions.
"Seoul Red" symbolizes the color of "dancheong," the pattern used in Korean traditional wooden buildings, while "Seoul Darkgray" represents the color of the "giwa" tile. Some other colors correspond to the green of Mt. Namsan, the white water of the Han River and the yellow of ginkgo leaves.
However, they were not publicized well and most citizens do not know about them.
The city created the park under the southern end of Mapo Bridge.
The park has a wave-shaped sculpture and bar code graphics using the 10 Seoul Colors. The figure gives off different colors as viewer perspectives change.
The city also installed square-shaped benches in the Seoul Colors to familiarize them with citizens.
"Seoul Color Park is a part of the Han River Renaissance Project and provides a resting place for citizens, as well as promotes Seoul's symbolic colors," a city official said.
The Seoul Colors have been used in various public designs in the city. "Other leading cities in the world also have their own characteristic colors," the official said. "For example, Berlin, Germany, set up a representative color after unification and successfully regained its position as an advanced city. Sydney, Australia, and Yokohama, Japan, also are trying to determine their city colors."
In addition to Seoul Color Park, there are designs using the Seoul Colors at the Seoul Museum of Art and Seoul Museum of History.