Ikseon-dong: Hanok Alleys Turned Into Bars and Cafés

The hanok here were not built for aristocrats. In the 1920s a developer laid out rows of small courtyard houses on speculative plots — a mass-market version of traditional architecture for a growing city — and for most of the twentieth century the block was ordinary, poor and slated for redevelopment more than once.

What saved it was inertia followed by fashion. By the 2010s the surviving alleys were one of the last dense hanok blocks left in central Seoul, and small operators started taking single houses and turning them into cafés and bars with the timber frames intact.

The result is a neighbourhood that reads as historic and functions as a nightlife district. Ceilings are low, courtyards have been glassed over, and the tables sit where families once slept. Purists dislike it; everyone else has a drink and enjoys the fact that a 1920s hanok is being used rather than photographed from the street.

Eat and drink, in that order, and walk the alleys between courses.

The food runs from modern Korean — small plates, seasonal menus, the sort of cooking that would not have existed here fifteen years ago — to noodle houses and grilled skewers. Dinner sits at ₩15,000 to ₩25,000 a head, which is central-Seoul normal rather than cheap. Cocktail bars have taken several of the deeper courtyards, and a drink runs ₩12,000 to ₩16,000.

Daytime is cafés: ₩5,000 to ₩7,000 for coffee, often in a room with the original roof beams overhead and a glassed courtyard. Weekend afternoons bring queues at the best-known places; a weekday at 15:00 you will walk into any of them.

Because the block is small — you can cross it in four minutes — the way to use it is not to plan. Walk the alleys, look through doorways, and take whichever place looks right.

Jongno 3-ga station serves it directly on Lines 1, 3 and 5, and Exits 4 and 6 put you at the edge of the block. That makes it one of the best-connected corners of the old city.

The alleys are narrow, unlit in places and paved unevenly, so it is not an easy visit with a wheelchair or a pushchair. Most of the converted houses have a raised threshold at the door.

It sits inside a triangle of things worth doing: Insadong eight minutes west, Gwangjang Market ten minutes east, Changdeokgung ten minutes north. An evening that runs market dinner, Ikseon-dong drinks and a walk along Cheonggyecheon covers the best of central Seoul after dark in about three hours.