The Gyeongui Line Forest Park: Seoul Urbanism on TBS eFM's Koreascape

Seoul Urbanism on TBS eFM's Koreascape

This month we walk the Gyeongui Line Forest Park, which cuts across four miles of Seoul on part of the path of the Gyeongui Line train, which back in the colonial period ran all the way to Manchuria. Spared from the high-rise development that now exists immediately alongside it, the area of the Gyeongui Line’s old tracks has become a linear park replete with bike paths, art installations, bookstores, and open spaces for members of the communities through which it passes to complete as they see fit. Beginning just south of Hyochang Park, it ends in the center of the Yeonnam-dong, a neighborhood that has in recent years become hugely popular among young people not least due to the Gyeongui Line Forest Park itself — whose lively Yeonnam-dong section its many young habitués now call “Yeontral Park.”