Published by the Gwangju International Center since 2001
Even among residents of Gwangju, most don’t know the fact that this city had actually been one of the biggest hanok cities in Korea. It’s estimated that in the 1980s, there were more than 100,000 hanok in Gwangju.
This spring the Gwangju News carried a feature on The Bulldozed Future, a newborn webzine on urban exploration, as an interview with its Seoul-based urban exploring photographer and editor, Ryan Berkebile (March 2021 issue). Since then Ryan has done more exploring and has come out with the second issue of his webzine. His adventures include numerous explorations in the Gwangju area that make it into the zine’s latest issue.
This is not an article about environmentalism or protecting the wildlife.
Just when you thought hanok architecture had been consigned to either moldering country homes or sterile boutique spaces, a lone hanok restorer in his mid-20s emerges with a vision to not only restore traditional houses in the present but also preserve their structural designs for posterity via 3D modeling.
With nine dead and eight injured, it’s hard to know where to start picking up the pieces. To provide some context, the ill-fated neighborhood is nearing the end of a long, arduous redevelopment process for the sake of unaffordable high-rise apartments.
