ZenKimchi Korean Food & Travel
Sep 23, 2026 · 34 min · 13 segments
Time Out named Jongno 3-ga the world’s coolest neighborhood. But the neighborhood is much more than the photogenic hanok cafés of Ikseon-dong. Joe McPherson takes you through the many layers of…
Why is this area so popular? For one thing, during the Joseon Dynasty and up until maybe the 1970s, this area was between two markets.
Pimakul was an alley that was actually designed by the first prime minister of the Joseon Dynasty when Seoul was being created as like a little alleyway.
A little walkway for normal people to walk through rather than going through the main thoroughfare.
The reason is the Justin dynasty was a Confucian or rather a Neo-Confucian dynasty.
And part of the rules was if someone that's above your status is traveling by, you have to stop everything, get down on the ground until they go by.
They can avoid running into all these aristocrats by running down Pimaco, which is like the alley to avoid the horses, the aristocrats on their horses.
this started to become a little more of a rowdy area because this is between two markets.
Uh, it was a little bit of, um, uh, you could say, uh, red light, red light type of activities there as well.
Um, And it was also a place where young aristocrats and even older aristocrats would try to pretend to be commoners and sneak off into Pimakol.
Um, so you're not going to experience that, but still a lot of the vibe, the old Pimaco vibe leaked into what is now Jongno Samga.
In fact, uh, after the Korean war, it was the largest red light district in the city.
And so it was a very powerful red light district up until 1968, where the sole mayor, uh, was approached by a lady of the evening and, uh, did an emergency, uh, meeting city meeting to do something about it and they came up with something called operation butterfly as in you get rid of the butterflies you get rid of the flowers and what they did was each entrance to the area they set up these all these lights and hiding in the shadows or playing close police officers and members of the media and anytime a man try to walk through this uh this light barrier they wouldn't jump out and go oh oh excuse me sir what do you plan to do here today can we take your picture click click click And that scene operation was supposed to last for a month, but within only one week, all the adult businesses in that area closed down and moved to the American military bases.
Now, also in this area, what made it really big was around when the Red Lake District was getting closed.
cinemas were opening up three major cinemas were alive and well in that era from the sixties onward and then in the nineteen seventies came the subway line started being built starting in nineteen seventy four with line one And then Line 1 connected Jongno-samga to the old downtown bureaucracy, Gwangamun City Hall.
So it became a convenient convergence for a lot of people going out to have a little bit of fun.
Why is this area so popular? For one thing, during the Joseon Dynasty and up until maybe the 1970s, this area was between two markets.
Pimakul was an alley that was actually designed by the first prime minister of the Joseon Dynasty when Seoul was being created as like a little alleyway.
A little walkway for normal people to walk through rather than going through the main thoroughfare.
The reason is the Justin dynasty was a Confucian or rather a Neo-Confucian dynasty.
And part of the rules was if someone that's above your status is traveling by, you have to stop everything, get down on the ground until they go by.
They can avoid running into all these aristocrats by running down Pimaco, which is like the alley to avoid the horses, the aristocrats on their horses.
this started to become a little more of a rowdy area because this is between two markets.
Uh, it was a little bit of, um, uh, you could say, uh, red light, red light type of activities there as well.
Um, And it was also a place where young aristocrats and even older aristocrats would try to pretend to be commoners and sneak off into Pimakol.
Um, so you're not going to experience that, but still a lot of the vibe, the old Pimaco vibe leaked into what is now Jongno Samga.
In fact, uh, after the Korean war, it was the largest red light district in the city.
And so it was a very powerful red light district up until 1968, where the sole mayor, uh, was approached by a lady of the evening and, uh, did an emergency, uh, meeting city meeting to do something about it and they came up with something called operation butterfly as in you get rid of the butterflies you get rid of the flowers and what they did was each entrance to the area they set up these all these lights and hiding in the shadows or playing close police officers and members of the media and anytime a man try to walk through this uh this light barrier they wouldn't jump out and go oh oh excuse me sir what do you plan to do here today can we take your picture click click click And that scene operation was supposed to last for a month, but within only one week, all the adult businesses in that area closed down and moved to the American military bases.
Now, also in this area, what made it really big was around when the Red Lake District was getting closed.
cinemas were opening up three major cinemas were alive and well in that era from the sixties onward and then in the nineteen seventies came the subway line started being built starting in nineteen seventy four with line one And then Line 1 connected Jongno-samga to the old downtown bureaucracy, Gwangamun City Hall.
So it became a convenient convergence for a lot of people going out to have a little bit of fun.
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