Recently I was in the car with a coworker, and we passed by this abandoned neighbourhood not far from where I used to live in 2007-9. Some of the storefronts were mildly sleazy and he told me it's good they're tearing this area down. Of course I went back later on my own to have a closer look.

1. The abandoned zone is corralled to the left by the highrises there, and its boundary terminates at a street running from the intersection to the right along a road up toward that construction site in the difference (which I explored several times a few years ago).


2. A closer look.


3. While wandering through the area, I ran into this friendly looking creature. Not sure if it's a cat or a rabbit or some kind of rodent.


4. It offered to give me a tour of its neighbourhood.


5. Garbage has been piled up by city workers to make the area uninhabitable.


6. Most other people have cleared out.


7. Totoro knows all the secret corners of this area.


8. He took me to his friend's house but nobody was home.


9. Up on the roof.


10. Totoro shows off his bike.


11.


12. Bath time.


13.


14. We went by the subway station to pick up some more friends.


15. Totoro recommends you wear proper footwear.


16.


17.


18. Playing hide-and-seek.


19.


20. Totoro loves rides.


21.


22.


23.


24. Don't worry, he's not going to jump.


25. Can you see him?


26. There's Totoro on his favourite roof.


27.


28.


29. He really likes this thing.


30. Up for a game?


31. My friend said "I'm Korean; this is wrong" and I was worried what he would do next. He arranged a more appropriate game.


32. Game on.


33. Totoro stays hidden from the developers.


34. It's getting pretty late.


35. Which way was home?


36. We got a bit turned around.


37. Oh well, this is home now. Not like anyone else was living here. So long, Totoro.

Hahahaha, this thread had me laughing in a big way. Thanks for the silliness!

Posted by Radical_Ed Hahahaha, this thread had me laughing in a big way. Thanks for the silliness!

This is one of those threads I thought would get a lot more interest. Huh...

haha i love this. totoro looks like a real party animal.

Very cool. What a cute tour guide ;)

At the beginning, I thought Totoro was super cute. But after seeing him for like 20 photos or so he started to take on a very senile look... Something about that huge grin, man.

Cool location(s) though!! It always amazes me how such a population-dense place can have abandoned sectors.

I wouldn't want to explore with Totoro. He is an attention whore and photobombs every shot.

But what an amazing find! The notion that an entire neighborhood can be marked for demolition boggles my mind. Here in the states, Detroit is desperate to demolish just some of its burned out vacant neighborhoods but encounters resistance from property owners. I guess there isn't the same notion of private property in Korea as there is here.

Amazing place and awesome explore!

What really strikes me as odd is that there's a good deal of reusable stuff in and about these abandonments. From doors, trim, fixtures, furniture, planters, toys... I'd think this would all have been picked clean and sold at flea markets and such. I'm guessing South Korea isn't as "third world" as I had surmised. I'm used to seeing trash dumps being picked through by severely impoverished citizens for stuff like plastic soda bottles. This is not one of those places, is it?

Steed: It looks like an amazing amount of abandoned stuff. I kinda enjoyed the thread, but the pictures seemed to all be of similar style, with Totoro in every one. I felt like you missed capturing the spaces and instead captured only piles of garbage that didn't get the feeling of the space very well... Seems like there is much more potential here. Maybe that's why the thread didn't get more response?
-free

Posted by freeside Steed: It looks like an amazing amount of abandoned stuff. I kinda enjoyed the thread, but the pictures seemed to all be of similar style, with Totoro in every one. I felt like you missed capturing the spaces and instead captured only piles of garbage that didn't get the feeling of the space very well... Seems like there is much more potential here. Maybe that's why the thread didn't get more response? -free

I think you're right, especially considering the high number of photos I took. I do have a ton more pictures of the area in general, but honestly it's not too different from the 40+ other abandoned neighbourhoods I've visited in Seoul, nine of which are within a couple kilometers of this one. I wouldn't have had the interest to take so many pictures without Totoro photobombing them; I needed to do something different this time.

I was just reading this morning that in 2010 they demolished an estimated 48,000 homes using this process. It hypothetically would make way for highrise apartment complexes like what you can see in the background in many of these shots. There is resistance, and we did find an evictee protest HQ in front of a Buddhist temple in this area:



Korea is a weird country in that it's a first-world society built on top of a third-world one. There are places you can go where you can see shantytowns sitting in the shade of sparkling highrise megaprojects. The best example is here: https://storify.co...psy-s-gangnamstyle . I tend not to go to these places because I don't want to disturb the locals or get involved in evictee politics.

Protip: Totoro actually created uer

What is it about dirty, dangerous abandoned buildings that make me long to squat in them? I have a perfectly nice apartment.

The free rent, I guess.