Kangnam 25 Years Ago!

My family has told me that not too long ago Kangnam was nothing but farmland. Having worked in Daechi-dong for a while, it was hard for me to imagine Kangnam pre-hagwons and Pascucci. Today Cousin N showed me some photos featured on Yahoo Korea -- photos of Kangnam in the early eighties. Wo! If you had me guess the date of the photos, I would have guessed that they were taken fifty years ago.

Now I realize why my mother was so overwhelmed when she came to Seoul last year. It's easy to overlook how drastically Seoul has changed in the past twenty-five years. Looking at these photos I realize that Seoul is like the Heidi Montag of world capitals.




1983 Songpa-gu, Oryun-dong, Location of Olympic Park & the Park Hotel now stand.



1981 Songpa-gu, Bangi-dong



1983 Daechi-dong, in front of Eunmaa Apartment