Seoul Walk: Dolgoji Station to Cheongnyangni Station

Dolgoji Station is located in the east of Seongbuk-gu, a district located just to the east of the central Seoul district of Jongno-gu. For most of the first 20 years of the 21st century, the neighborhoods surrounding it remained largely untouched by the sort of large scale property development that was happening around the city. But those days are gone, and in 2024, we can see that development has hit the area with a vengeance.

We start this walk exiting Dolgoji Station's Gate 7 facing south onto Dolgohi-ro (01:20). We take a look around and see the elevated Bukbu Expressway behind us. Beyond the expressway, a crane rises in the distance. What's not visible is the entire city block which once was a residential neighborhood and is now the site of a massive redevelopment project.

As we head south, it's easy to feel that this little piece of Dolgoji-ro is frozen in time. Had we come through here in the early 1990s, the signage would have been different, but most of the buildings would have been the same. This is how many Seoul neighborhoods looked back then.

Continuing on, we see some modern high-rise apartments ahead, in this case the Samsung Raemian brand and, next to those, some from Daelim's E-Comfort World brand. After Dolgoji-ro becomes Imun-ro (13:23), we see the contrast of the older buildings lining the street and the apartments rising behind them.

Then, we enter a stretch of road where we start to see newer buildings towering above the old ones, and we pass multiple construction sites, the first at 16:44, all of which look to be building more apartments. It makes me wish I'd come through this neighborhood a year or two earlier to capture how it looked before the wrecking crews came in.

Once we get past the construction sites, we start to see more old buildings again, though fewer as old as those we saw closer to Dolgoji Station. At 42:26, Imun-ro becomes Wangsan-ro and, at 53:03, we enter another little area that looks somewhat frozen in time. It's a shopping area where the buildings and the stores look as if they came straight out of the 90s. Many shopping areas around Seoul looked just like this back then. The effect is somewhat spoiled, though, by the recently constructed tower apartments in the distance.

I forgot to label them in the video, but at 54:58 we see the main building of Cheongnyangni Station, the railway portion of it, and the Lotte Department Store. Cheognyangni has long been a major rail station and today serves multiple railway trains and lines.

Our target is the Seoul Metropolitan Subway portion of the station, which serves Line 1, the Gyeongchun Line,  the Suin-Bundang Line, and the Gyeongui-Jeungang Line. We enter via Gate 3 at 56:04.

ROUTE MAP:
https://bit.ly/3vIZEpS

META:
I filmed this on the afternoon of January 12, 2024, in 4K@60 with an iPhone 14 Pro mounted on a DJI OM 5 gimbal. The temperature was ~5°C/41°F. I edited and rendered with DaVinci Resolve Studio 18.6.

TIMECODES:
00:00 Dolgoji Station Gate 7
01:20 Dolgoi-ro
13:23 Imun-ro
38:01 Hoegi--ro
39:01 Imun-ro
42:26 Wangsan-ro
46:39 Jegi-ro
47:11 Wangsan-ro
56:04 Cheongnyangni Station Gate 3