Irony killed by colour in South Korea.
The Korean war started badly for the South. In 1950, Communist forces rolled right through the country, with a small region around the city of Busan at the peninsula’s southernmost tip the only holdout.
Hundreds of thousands of people seeking refuge poured into the city. Once pre-existing working class areas became full, displaced people gravitated towards the mini-neighbourhood of Gamcheon. At the time, Gamcheon boasted only a handful of houses scattered up a harbour-side hill. It became transformed into a sprawling, informal district made from corrugated iron, wood and rocks.
By 2009 Gamcheon no longer remained a makeshift or ‘shanty’ town, but serious deprivation persisted. Apart from anything else, the town’s location, stretching up a steep incline and without subway stations, excluded local shops and cafes from business.
And so the Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism comes into the story. Presumably inspired by international example, they envisaged the suburb reworked as a ‘creative community’, and a tourist attraction to boot. Their project, extravagantly titled Dreaming of Busan’s Machu Picchu, hired artists, commissioned public art, opened street galleries, and, most noticeably, coated the houses, walls and streets in a riot of multi-coloured paint.
The result is visually arresting. And, as one of many tourists pouring into the winding alleyways, clutching our official ‘Gamcheon Culture Village’ maps, I can attest to the topographical joy of navigating its undulating nooks and crannies.
But what of the residents? It certainly seems that alongside the bougie boutiques and tacky haunts, more locally-owned independent businesses remain open than you otherwise might expect. Indeed, as is customary of Koreans, people are warm, open and friendly to us foreign passers-by.
However, something doesn’t feel right about the juxtaposition of civic-endorsed, purpose-built Instagrammable photo points alongside numerous official signs warning against photographing residents or their homes.
Irony died in Gamcheon Culture Village.
