Ihwa-dong Mural Village

This guide to the Ihwa-dong Mural Village in Seoul opens with residents pouring grey paint over two of its most photographed staircases in 2016, undoing murals painted by roughly seventy artists in a 2006 revitalization project. It traces the neighborhood's roots as a hillside refuge for Korean War survivors and asks why the murals that once saved it from demolition later drove some residents to erase their own front steps. A few murals and blunter messages from residents still remain to be found among the walls today.