
Osaka Ikuno Korea Town
Bustling Korean market street of about a hundred fifty shops born from a postwar black market.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Osaka Ikuno Korea Town follows the Korean community that settled along the Hirano River from the 1920s, many from Jeju Island, and the 1947 ordinance that stripped them of citizenship and ration cards overnight. It traces how vendors on Miyuki-dori turned to a black market of kimchi, offal and other foods, and how that improvised trade became a formal market with shopkeeper associations by 1951. Walk the roughly three hundred meters between the four traditional gates, past hangul signs stacked over Japanese ones.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Tsuruhashi Shopping Street
Sprawling postwar market of narrow alleys, Korean grocers and smoking yakiniku grills across six linked shopping streets.
Kuromon Market
Century-old covered fish and food arcade of some one hundred fifty stalls, now packed with street-eating tourists.
Tenjinbashi-suji Shopping Street ( 1 Chome )
Covered arcade of roughly eight hundred shops stretching over two kilometers, born as a riverside vegetable market.
Janjan-Yokocho (Nanyo-dori Shopping Street)
Narrow covered alley of retro game parlors and no-frills kushikatsu counters favored by local workers.
Orange Street
Tree-lined former furniture street reborn as a boutique-lined shopping strip named for a citrus pun.
Tenjinbashi-suji Shopping Street
Covered arcade of nearly eight hundred shops stretching two and a half kilometers along an old pilgrim route.