True Beauty | Sewoon Plaza — The Chase That Ran the Length of Cheonggyecheon

Cheonggyecheon-ro 159 is a concrete cliff of electronics. Sewoon Plaza opened in 1968 as Kim Sugeun's answer to a city that wanted to look finished. Stairs climb past parts counters. The stream runs along the south wall, restored in 2005, tourists on the lower walk and delivery scooters on the road.

True Beauty cut Han Seo-jun's chase through this block and the decks above it so the run would look like one street. The edit is a lie the building can still support. You take the same stairs and the same turn and the plaza does not care who you are chasing. It has sold irons and semiconductors and drone motors to whoever arrived first.

Jongno 3-ga Exit 12 is a four-minute walk. Euljiro 4-ga is closer if you come from the south. The shops close on Sundays. The stream does not. Stand on the deck and look down at the water the city put back after it had buried it under an elevated road. Seo-jun was running toward a girl who kept two faces. The concrete only had one.

Photo: Sharon Hahn Darlin, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.