A handcart stacked with paper comes down an alley in Inhyeon-dong (인현동) in the middle of a weekday afternoon. It passes a press room with the door open, then a foil shop, and stops at the cutter who will trim what the last shop printed. Nobody in this alley does the whole job. The job walks.
If you’ve spent an evening in Euljiro (을지로), up an unmarked staircase in one of the bars everybody now photographs, you’ve been drinking on top of this industry. You probably didn’t notice, because you arrived at nine and the industry closes at six. The print alleys are why the bars above them could open in the first place, and they’re on a redevelopment clock. Bars can move. A print district built on carrying distance can’t.
한국어 요약
사라지기 전의 을지로 인쇄 골목
을지로 인쇄 골목은 을지로3가역과 충무로역 사이 인현동 일대에 모인 인쇄와 종이 업체들로, 한국에서 인쇄업이 가장 많이 모인 곳입니다. 서울시 세운 지도에 따르면 약 1,100곳의 업체가 있고, 대부분 작업의 한 단계만 맡습니다.
이 지역은 오랫동안 이어진 세운 재개발 구역 안에 있지만, 지구 전체의 공식 철거 날짜는 없습니다. 방문은 평일 늦은 오전부터 오후 중반까지가 좋습니다.
잘못된 정보나 날짜가 있다면 알려 주세요.
Eleven Hundred Shops Work as One Factory
The blocks around Inhyeon-dong, between Euljiro 3-ga and Chungmuro (충무로), hold the largest concentration of printing businesses in Korea. Seoul’s own Sewoon Map catalogues roughly eleven hundred of them, by name, address, speciality and photograph. That’s eleven hundred businesses in a few blocks in the middle of a global city, and most people who drink there couldn’t name one.
The division of labour is extreme. Paper wholesalers, offset presses, plate makers, foil and embossing specialists, die cutters, binders and finishers each do one thing well and nothing else, and a single job moves from shop to shop on a handcart. It’s a distributed factory that happens to be laid out as streets.
The city treats it as heritage. The Seoul Museum of History keeps an Inhyeon-dong archive, the city has exhibited the alleys under the title of a place that prints the world, and sewoon.org carries a district history alongside a glossary of over two hundred trade terms. Architecture writers take it seriously too, including a long VMSpace essay on how the district works.
The Alley Is Younger Than It Looks
Everything about those blocks says old: worn stairwells, hand painted shop names, machines that have sat in the same spot for decades. So it surprised me to learn that the print alley in its current form is younger than I am, and that it was created by the same kind of thing that now threatens it.
Until the 1970s the densest concentration of printers in Seoul wasn’t in Inhyeon-dong at all. It was in Janggyo-dong (장교동), up around Euljiro 1-ga and 2-ga. In 1983 the Janggyo-dong redevelopment broke ground, the printers were pushed out, and the ones who couldn’t afford to leave the downtown core moved a short distance and packed themselves into the houses and shopfronts of Inhyeon-dong. That move built the alley people photograph today. The Seoul Museum of History survey of the district lays it out across some three hundred records. This district has already been moved once.
It grew anyway, because the demand was right on top of it: offices and government buildings across the middle of the city needing work printed, and needing it today. To serve that at speed, the small shops split the job. One makes the plates, the next runs the press, another cuts, another folds and binds, another does the foil and the finishing. That’s why the district looks the way it does, and why it can’t simply be relocated to a cheaper industrial park out past the river. The network only works because every stage sits within carrying distance of every other stage.
Euljiro’s print alleys in numbers and dates
A district that has already been moved once
| When or what | What the article records |
|---|---|
| Until the 1970s | The densest concentration of printers in Seoul is in Janggyo-dong, around Euljiro 1-ga and 2-ga |
| 1983 | The Janggyo-dong redevelopment breaks ground; printers move to Inhyeon-dong |
| Today | Roughly eleven hundred printing businesses are catalogued on Seoul’s Sewoon Map |
| Since 2018 | More than 400 tool shops in Ipjeong-dong have closed since demolitions began |
| 2024 | The city announces a 33 storey tower for the Ipjeong-dong site |
How to read itThe alley people photograph today was itself created by an earlier redevelopment, which is why the article says this district has already been moved once.
The Workshops Paid for the Bars
This part is my argument rather than anyone else’s. Euljiro’s bar scene, the one every guide now calls Hipjiro, grew out of the print shops, and it depends on them more than it looks.
The workshops kept the rents low for decades, because industrial tenants in ageing buildings don’t bid up commercial space the way retail does. They kept the buildings unrenovated, which is the raw look the bars later traded on. They emptied the district at six in the evening, leaving a stock of cheap, unwatched, structurally interesting rooms in the geographic centre of Seoul with nobody living upstairs to complain about noise. And they gave the area the vocabulary the bars borrowed wholesale: the steel, the signage, the fluorescent light, the sense of a place for making things.
That’s the whole recipe for a nightlife district. I’ve written elsewhere about how Korean venues are structured and why they end up in exactly this kind of building. Euljiro is the clearest case in Seoul of a night that was subsidised, without anyone intending it, by a daytime industry. When the print shops go, the thing that made Euljiro cheap goes with them. Anyone who has watched a warehouse district turn over in Toronto or Montreal knows how this ends, and it doesn’t end with more small bars.
Redevelopment Is Already Next Door
Nobody will put a demolition date on the print alleys as a whole, and I’m not qualified to read a redevelopment plan, so I won’t guess one. What the small business press has reported for years is that the country’s largest print cluster faces disappearance under the long running redevelopment of the wider Sewoon (세운) area. What I can do is list what has already gone around it.
Along Cheonggyecheon (청계천), more than 400 tool shops in Ipjeong-dong (입정동) have closed since demolitions began in 2018, and in 2024 the city announced a 33 storey tower for the site, according to Kyunghyang. In June 2022 the Seoul High Court ordered the noodle house Euljimyeonok (을지면옥) to hand its building to the developer of Sewoon zone 3, Seoul Shinmun reported. A printer of thirty years, Jo Jong-dae (조종대), put the mood plainly to the Korea Herald in 2018 as the work moved in: “We are nervous.”
The biggest change is still coming. Seoul’s plan to replace the Sewoon Sangga (세운상가) arcades with a long green park advanced in 2025, with a first temporary park approved that July, Dailian reported. In October 2025 the city raised the height limit for Sewoon zone 4 to about 142 metres, and as much as 145 metres on the Cheonggyecheon side. On 6 November 2025 the Supreme Court upheld the ordinance change, and UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre asked for a heritage impact assessment because towers there threaten the view from Jongmyo Shrine (종묘), as Financial News and Herald covered. In June 2026 Jongno-gu approved the project plan amid protests, according to Kukinews. The clock is running, and nobody will say what time it shows.
The Pressure Was There Before the Cranes
The redevelopment isn’t the only thing squeezing the alleys, and it isn’t the first. Printing is loud and it throws dust, and Inhyeon-dong was full of homes and shops when the printers arrived. The complaints started almost immediately, and the pressure to move the industry somewhere else never stopped.
Technology has been working on it too. Newer machines fold several stages into one, so the division of labour that defines the alley is collapsing, and the shape of the place is changing with it. The small firms in Inhyeon-dong still run on the old system, which makes them both the most interesting part of the district and the most exposed.
To be fair to the city, it has done real work here. The Sewoon Map is an excellent piece of civic design that almost nobody outside the trade uses, and the archives and exhibitions take the alleys seriously. The same city that archives the alleys is approving the towers next to them, and both things are true at once.
How to Walk the Print Alleys
Go on a weekday, late morning to mid afternoon. The alleys are shuttered on weekends, and the district is its work traffic: the handcarts stacked with paper, the doors open onto machines, the smell of ink. Start at Euljiro 3-ga and walk south toward Chungmuro, and let yourself get lost, because the interesting part isn’t on the main road.
Before you go, open the Sewoon Map and pick a few shops. It lists them by speciality, so you can decide in advance to see an offset press, a foil shop and a cutting room rather than wandering past a hundred identical shutters. The district history and trade glossary on sewoon.org will give you enough vocabulary to ask a sensible question.
Mind your manners, because these are workplaces and not a set. Ask before photographing anyone or any interior, and don’t walk into an active press room. If someone gives you five minutes, buy something small or come back with a job. The district survives on jobs, not visitors. If you need business cards, a flyer, a poster or a record sleeve, this is where you should be having it made anyway. It will be cheaper, faster and better than anything you order online, and you can stand there while it happens.
That last part is why a DJ cares. Music promotion in this country ran on paper for decades: posters, flyers, tickets, sleeves, inserts. Somebody printed all of it, and for a long stretch of that history a good share of those somebodies were probably in these alleys. I don’t have that documented shop by shop, and I won’t claim it until I’ve asked the shops themselves. The general line holds without it, from a print shop in Inhyeon-dong to a flyer on a Hongdae wall to a room full of people on a Friday.
I’m going to walk it with a recorder and a camera, talk to five shops properly, and write that up. If you know one of these businesses, or you’re second generation in one, get in touch. I’d rather write it with you than about you. Until then, go on a weekday, look up, and notice what’s holding your favourite bar district in place.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the Euljiro print alley?
It’s the dense cluster of printing and paper businesses around Inhyeon-dong (인현동), between Euljiro 3-ga and Chungmuro stations in central Seoul, the largest concentration of print trade in Korea. Seoul’s Sewoon Map documents roughly eleven hundred businesses in the area, most of them specialising in one stage of the printing process. The alley in its current form dates from the 1980s, when the Janggyo-dong redevelopment pushed printers there.
Is the Euljiro print district being demolished?
The area sits inside the long running Sewoon redevelopment, and the Korean business press has reported for years that the country’s largest print cluster is under threat as a result. Neighbouring blocks have already gone, including the Ipjeong-dong tool shops and Euljimyeonok, and the Sewoon zone 4 towers were approved in 2025 and 2026. There is no public demolition date for the print district as a whole, so the practical answer is that it’s changing now and worth seeing now.
How do I visit the Euljiro print alleys?
Go on a weekday between late morning and mid afternoon, when the shops are open and working; they’re closed on weekends. Start from Euljiro 3-ga Station and walk toward Chungmuro. The city’s Sewoon Map lets you find businesses by speciality before you go. These are workplaces, so ask before photographing and don’t enter active press rooms.
What does the print district have to do with Euljiro’s bars?
The industrial tenants kept rents low and buildings unrenovated for decades, and the district emptied out every evening, leaving cheap, characterful rooms in central Seoul with no residential neighbours. That combination let the Euljiro bar scene, known as Hipjiro, take hold, which is why changes to the print trade matter to the area’s nightlife.
Further Reading and Archives
- Seoul History Archive, Inhyeon-dong collection: the dedicated collection for these blocks
- Seoul Photo Archive (서울사진아카이브): search 을지로, 인쇄 and 세운상가
- Seoul Institute, Seoul in Photographs: the same streets in the sixties and seventies
- The Sewoon district history page and its glossary of trade terms
- VMSpace on the bones and flesh of the Inhyeon-dong alleys
Sources
Sewoon Map, the city’s directory of Euljiro print businesses
Seoul Metropolitan Government, announcement of the Sewoon Map
sewoon.org, Sewoon district history and trade glossary
VMSpace, on the Inhyeon-dong alleys
Seoul Media Hub, the city’s exhibition on the print alley
Seoul Museum of History, Inhyeon-dong survey and archive
Korea Small Business News, on the threat to the country’s largest print cluster
Kyunghyang, the Cheonggyecheon tool street (2025)
Seoul Shinmun, court ruling on Euljimyeonok (2022)
Korea Herald via Daum, Euljiro printers and redevelopment (2018)
Dailian, the Sewoon park plan (2025)
Financial News, the Supreme Court and the Sewoon height limit (2025)
Herald, UNESCO letter on Jongmyo (2025)
Kukinews, Jongno-gu approval and protests (2026)
Picture Credits
- Euljiro under colonial rule, then called Kogane-cho
Japanese book “Cities in Korea: Keijo (Seoul) and Jinsen (Incheon)”, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain. View the original file and its full licence terms. - Euljiro crossing, Seoul, 1971
공유마당, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: KOGL Type 1. View the original file and its full licence terms. - Print shops in the Euljiro printing alley, 2021
Aaaatu, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.
Historical images on this site are used under the licence stated for each file. KOGL Type 1 is the Korean public sector open licence permitting commercial use and adaptation with attribution; public domain items carry no restriction. If you hold rights in any image here and believe it has been used in error, get in touch and it will be removed.
Written from Seoul by The DJ Diaries, in Seoul since 2002 and in the booth for thirty years. More on the site, or book a DJ.
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