True Beauty | Ikseon-dong — Hanok Alleys After the First Friends

The alleys in Ikseon-dong were laid for houses, not for a transfer student's first afternoon off.

Low tiled roofs lean toward one another. Courtyard gates open onto cafes that used to be kitchens. In True Beauty, Ju-kyung comes here with the girls who decided she belonged, after tteokbokki and an arcade, and later the same neighborhood holds a scene that does not feel like a day off at all.

Ikseon-dong sits a short walk from Anguk Station in Jongno-gu. The hanok blocks date from the 1920s and 1930s. What the camera loved is still the working street: timber eaves, stone thresholds, a lane narrow enough that two people cannot pass without choosing who steps aside.

Comcom arcade and the snack shops are businesses with hours. The lanes themselves stay open. Come in daylight if you want the roofs. Come after the dinner rush if you want the lanterns and less of a queue at every door.

The drama needed a place where a new face could try being ordinary. Ikseon-dong was already doing that work. You feel it when a delivery scooter has to wait for a couple taking a photograph, and neither of them is wrong to be there.

Photo: S h y numis, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.