The idea that some cities are essentially an amalgam of villages is perhaps no truer than in Seoul, where chon, the Korean word for “village,” is literally embedded in the map. Take, for example, the swarming student enclave of Sinchon (“New Village”), or Haebangchon (“Liberation Village”), a gritty central area initially settled by North Korean refugees in the 1950s. Some of these villages have always had more cachet than others. Modern Seoul is a sprawling, shifting, undisciplined entity, threatening constantly to spill over various geographic and administrative boundaries. But centuries ago, the South Korean capital revolved utterly around the royal palace at its heart, Gyeongbokgung, the focal point from which distances, directions, and careers were measured.
And so aristocrats, scholars and hangers-on from the 14th century onward crowded into the…
