Bukchon Hanok Village

This guide to Bukchon Hanok Village in Seoul follows Chong Segwon, the developer who filled this Joseon-era noble quarter with hanok houses in the 1920s to keep Japanese colonizers from remaking the hillside, and paid for it under colonial police torture in 1942. It traces the yangban officials who first prized this address between the royal palaces, and the tourism boom that turned his preserved lanes into one of Seoul's most photographed streets. Walk the upper lanes early, before the crowds these houses now draw arrive.