On the other side of the ridge from where I live, there's a community that came into being shortly after the Korean War. North Korean refugees had occupied an unused military garrison, but the Americans now wanted it back. So the refugees were pushed uphill to settle the side of the mountain.
Seventy years later, and the refugee camp has prospered, largely because of the active US garrison next door. It has also become a foreign enclave, with one particular street lined with good restaurants and bars that are hard to find elsewhere in Korea.
One of those bars was set up in a former car garage. The people who ran this bar also had a bar in the basement.
-3. You can see the wall still shows signs of being a garage before.
-2. The basement was sometimes a live music venue.
-1. There was a locked door leading to a staircase.
0. And it had a pool table.
1. Then in late March, without warning, the landlady sold the building to a company, which immediately shuttered both bars. The full details of what exactly happened are pending the outcome of an ongoing trial.
2. One day, I noticed that one of the shutters was actually a gate, and it wasn't locked. So I poked my head in and saw a light was on. Thinking someone might be inside, I decided to come back later, after 1am.
3. You can see that the floor is flooding. Apparently the place was always flooding, being an old building, and with nobody there to deal with it, it was starting to fill up.
4. Turns out no one was there, though the doors to both bars were locked.
5. I squeezed through this passage to get to the apartment entrance.
6. I was able to climb the stairs up to the apartments, which had been vacant for a year prior to closure. From higher up, I could look over the fence into the US military garrison. Everything from the structures below all the way up to the highrise apartments in the distance is part of the garrison. It's about 95% abandoned now.
7. I found that the toilet was still running, although someone had taken the seat away. You could still flush it. I took a dump and was able to flush.
8. This is the name of the basement bar.
9. I came back a few weeks later, and found that both bars were unlocked now. The basement was flooded, but not deeply. After taking this photo, I went home to get my rubber boots and came back.
10. The upstairs bar served South African pub food.
11. The pool table was still there.
12. I haven't called yet.
13. It appears they may have been pumping out the water recently.
14. Lots of bottles left behind, but nothing to drink. Yes, there was a light on inside the space back there.
15. There's the stage.
16. Behind the bar.
17. One of their final events.
18. Back upstairs. In May 2019, my dad played an acoustic set in this spot.
19. The drinks.
20. Also only empties.
There have been more evictions in the area, and I'm going to be watching for more developments closely for the foreseeable future.
