K-pop industry enriches Seongsu, 'Brooklyn of Seoul'

Korean and foreign visitors look around SM Entertainment's flagship store Kwangya in the basement of the company’s new building Seoul Forest D-Tower, Oct. 7. Korea Times photo by Lee Hae-rin

Eastern Seoul’s Seongsu-dong is one of the most tagged locations on Instagram and emerging as a trendy must-visit for young people.

Known for its unique blend of 70s vibe with trendy youth culture, some have called it the “Brooklyn of Seoul,” referring to the once-industrial New York neighborhood now famous for creativity and arts.

The factories and warehouses that once produced and stored automobile parts and handmade shoes in the 70s, which were mostly left derelict when the Asian Financial Crisis hit Korea in the late 90s, have been turned into a creative haven for young artists looking for low-rent premises in the 2010s.

Today, the district features an authentic urban landscape of low red-bricked buildings that house handmade shoemakers’ decades-old ateliers right next to trendy coffee shops and restaurants. Nearby, co-working spaces house startups, while luxury and fashion brand pop-up stores appear at every corner.

Experienced shoemakers make leather shoes at shoemaking factory workshops in eastern Seoul's Seongsu-dong area in this photo taken on Oct. 15, 2018. The old factory town was formerly home to thousands of shoemakers. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk

A pop-up store operated by Porsche in Seongsu-dong, Seoul in 2022 / Courtesy of Porsche Korea

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the neighborhood emerged as a popular travel destination among young and trend-sensitive foreign tourists, to the extent of nearly replacing the shopping district in central Seoul’s Myeong-dong as the city’s central point for inbound tourists.

Nearly 200 new restaurants opened in Seongsu between the third quarters of 2019 to 2021 while the sales of nearly 1,500 businesses increased from 36.4 billion to 46 billion won during the same time period, according to the big data company Nice ZiniData.

At the heart of the neighborhood’s ongoing popularity, enough to attract 30 million visitors during the first half of this year alone, stands K-pop. Seongsu became a “mecca of K-pop for Korean and international music fans,” according to music and culture critic Lim Hee-yun.

“Among K-pop fans, especially those who are fans of artists from SM Entertainment, ‘kwangya’ equates to Seongsu-dong,” Lim said, referring to the Korean term meaning “wilderness,” which is a key concept of the K-pop powerhouse’s fictional universe.

The company has made recurring mentions of kwangya and related concepts through the lyrics and music videos of its artists, including NCT and aespa, to build its cultural universe under the influence of Marvel’s cinematic universe, according to the expert. Then the company moved its headquarters from Cheongdam and opened a flagship store called Kwangya last November in the basement of the company’s new building Seoul Forest D-Tower, featuring albums and merchandise.

Thus, K-pop fans were given a new game of taking a “K-pop pilgrimage to Kwangya” and touring around Seongsu-dong, Lim said. The district is already filled with a variety of trendy entertainment and dining establishments, while several Korean celebrities reside in the area’s high-rise flats, giving visitors an exciting closer look at the showbiz and culture industry.

The neighborhood also features the headquarters of 1MILLION Dance Studio, a global dance company consisting of choreographers who work with several K-pop artists. Its one-day class has become a popular tour program with 60 to 70 percent of participants from other countries.

Meanwhile, the city government built a temporary outdoor K-pop stage to accommodate an audience of 15,000, equivalent to Seoul’s largest concert venue at Jamsil Indoor Stadium. The stage, located where a concrete factory formerly stood, will stage concerts for two years before construction of an international business zone begins there, slated for completion by 2030.

A giant stage for K-pop concerts is set up at the location of a former concrete factory in Seongsu-dong , Oct. 5. The installation can accommodate an audience of 15,000 and has staged performances by aespa and NCT127. Yonhap

Fans line up to enter Pledis Entertainment's pop-up event "Seventeen Street" in Seongsu-dong, Seoul, Oct. 7, to celebrate the boy band Seventeen's comeback. Korea Times photo by Lee Hae-rin

Last Friday, Pledis Entertainment opened the pop-up event “Seventeen Street,” bringing around 150,000 fans to Seongsu to celebrate its boy band Seventeen’s comeback.

As with Seongsu, Seoul’s trendiest downtown areas have always developed alongside the changing trends of popular music, experts say.

It first started with folk music in Myeongdong, as young artists gathered there in the 1970s. Then the university district in Sinchon became the next youth culture hotspot with the rise of rock and heavy metal. The trend later moved to the neighboring Hongdae area due to Sinchon’s rising property values, giving birth to local indie rock and busking scenes, according to music critic Kim Jakka.

However, unlike Yongsan and Jamsil, where other major K-pop giants HYBE and JYP set up shop, Seongsu has gained unrivaled popularity from tourists because the neighborhood has both a symbolic significance in the K-pop narrative and well-established dining and cultural attractions.

The two culture experts agreed that the city’s urban lifestyle trend will remain in Seongsu and center around K-pop for a while.

To prevent gentrification and displacement of long-time residents that previous popular areas such as Hongdae suffered, the local District Office has implemented anti-gentrification measures, Kim pointed out.

Since 2015, Seongdong district has offered tax benefits to landlords who agreed to stabilize rents and designated the area a “zone for sustainable development” to restrict the influx of powerful franchises.

Another reason for the boom's continuation is Korea’s demographic crisis.

“It is unlikely that Seoul will see a rise of another commercial downtown area and popularity of another genre other than K-pop … simply because there won’t be as many young people to lead a new trend,” Kim said.

Nearly a million babies were born every year in Korea during the 1960s and 70s. The generation drove the trend shifts of the past decades, he said. However, the birth rate started slowing, eventually cutting new births by 75 percent within six decades with only around 249,000 babies born in 2022.

Lim believes that under such circumstances, Seongsu could be where K-pop diversifies and expands its spectrum as a musical genre.

“K-pop as a genre is already expanding … More people who are interested in K-pop, such as trainees and would-be trainees, could flock to the neighborhood and they could create a wider and more diverse K-pop scene here, featuring band music or idol cover dances, for example,” Lim said.