SAMYANG

Coffee break

Though rainy nights are my favorite time to shoot, I spend rainy days in cafes. There are worse ways to spend a day than relaxing in a coffee shop, sipping an espresso. At any rate, it’s an opportunity to catch up on reading. One of my favorite coffeeshops is a renovated Hanok just a minute’s walk from where I work. I go there at least three times a week, sometimes more. The place has been around for years. Though many cafes now pursue minimalism, sometimes to a fault, this one creates a warmer, more personalized vibe, an intimate space almost like your grandmother’s home. One rainy morning, I went to this cafe to get some work done. No matter how hard I tried to concentrate, however, my eye kept returning to the rear window. The window serves as a frame for a painting or photograph, bringing into the room the view of the tile roof of the house next door. Though I’ve seen it hundreds of times, the view mesmerizes me every time. Sipping my coffee, I watched rain water drip from the eaves.

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Rainy season

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Bukchon has more than just Hanok houses. Like any neighborhood, it has many restaurants, grocery stores, laundry shops and other businesses. Though rising rents are forcing many to close, many persevere, supported by patronage from loyal local customers and the ever growing number of visitors.

They alleyway in front of our office, for instance, boasts plenty of restaurants and shops. Some, like an instant noodle shop I frequent, have been around for decades. Others are of much more recent vintage. Ordinarily, tourists would fill this street, but thanks to the rain, it was blissfully quiet - just a loan woman and her umbrella.

Trumpet vines

Despite having grown up in the United States, I do not know the English names of many flowers and trees. Often, I’m forced to look them up in the dictionary after learning the Korean names first. As I came to Korea when I was just 21, I never had the opportunity to experience those flowers, those trees in the land of my birth. It was only after coming here that I could experience their beauty. One such flower is the trumpet vine. Every summer, these creapers with large, orange conical flowers cover fences and walls all over Bukchon Hanok Village. They make for great photographs - this time of year, my Instagram feed fills up with shots of the flowers, and I’m always running into young couples taking selfies beneath the vines. Despite seeing them every summer for at least the last decade, however, I didn’t know what they were called in English until this year, when I finally decided to look up their Korean name - neungsohwa - in the dictionary. Interestingly enough, the trumpet vine is indigenous to the eastern regions of North America, where I was born and raised. Yet

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31 Gahoe-dong

When people think of Bukchon, the first image that comes to mind is that of 31 Gahoe-dong. Often likened to Lombard Street, San Francisco’s iconic road of hairpin turns, 31 Gahoe-dong is a hillside community of terraced tile roof homes and narrow alleyways winding up and down the heights. The view from the top of the hill is one of Seoul’s most symbolic as the glass and steel of the city’s future loom over the tile roofs of its past.

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That such a beautiful place attracts many tourists should come as no surprise. From morning to sunset, this road is clogged with large groups of tourists, many dressed in rented Hanbok, Korea’s traditional attire. So many visitors descend upon the place, in fact, that some residents are moving out because of the noise and other inconveniences. Other are taking to the streets in protest, much as angry locals have in other heavily touristed cities such as Venice. Nowadays, multilingual signs plaster Bukchon’s alleyways, banners pleading for tourists to keep quiet and respect their privacy. The city recently announced measures to limit the hours tourists can visit the neighborhood, though this may prove difficult to enforce.

As I often have to come to work early, I sometimes walk Bukchon’s alleys in the dawn hours, when the tourists are conspicuous by their absence. As the morning sun casts a warm hue on the roof tiles and a wind chime rings in the breeze, the weight of the world lifts from my shoulders. In that moment, at least, it becomes clear why people chose to live here, why they continue to live here despite the availability of more modern, more convenient residential options

Robert Koehler writes and takes photograph for Seoul-based publishing company Seoul Selection, where he is the editor-in-chief of the monthly magazine SEOUL. A native of Long Island, New York, he has lived in Korea since 1997.

You can find his work on Instagram at @rjkoehler74
and on Tumblr at rjkoehler.tumblr.com