Itaewon-dong

This guide to Itaewon-dong in Seoul opens on a narrow, sloping alley where a Halloween-night crowd crush unfolded in October 2022, and traces the neighborhood's growth around a U.S. Army base from the 1950s into a multicultural nightlife strip. It follows the origins of the district's name, said to reach back four centuries to occupying soldiers and the outcasts who resettled here afterward. Stand in that alley and stretch your arms; you can touch both walls at once.