Conservation of Insa-dong: A Self-Defeating Thesis?

Insa-dong, known to English speaking visitors as “Mary's Alley, is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Seoul, the quintessential “zone of traditional culture” as guidebooks to Seoul proclaim. The present Insa-dong is produced out of the sedimentation of different historic origins and generative forces. It is a cumulative product of many individual actions that have taken place over time, and its evolution has been such that later strata only partly ‘succeed’ or ‘replace’ earlier ones, resulting in a mosaic like pattern, neither unitary nor fully integrated. The real issue relating to Insa-dong is not one of cultural conservation as such but a defence of the integrity, autonomy, diversity—in a word, authenticity of life (lived individually and collectively) against the ‘killer capitalist economy’ and the all-pervading bureaucratic controls in the globalizing age. Cities change over time and tradition is constantly redefined, rediscovered, reinvented. Any attempt to fix it spatially and temporar...