Ikseon-dong Hanok Village

This guide to Ikseon-dong Hanok Village in Seoul goes back to the 1920s, when a Korean developer named Jeong Se-gwon secretly funded the independence movement while building tightly packed urban hanok here to keep Japanese landlords from expanding into the neighborhood. It follows the area's slow decline through the 1980s as wealthier residents moved to Gangnam, and a 2004 demolition order that never quite went through. Look for the low black tile roofs threading between the alleys, each nearly a century old.