placesInsa-dong인사동

The antique trade here began as a forced sale. During the Japanese occupation wealthy Korean residents were made to move and to sell their belongings, and the district became the place that trade happened. After the Korean War it turned into a centre of artistic life and cafés; foreign visitors in the 1960s called it Mary's Alley; the 1988 Olympics brought the international trade. In 2000 the area was renovated, and after protest its rapid modernisation was halted for two years.

The temple in the neighbourhood is Jogyesa, a principal Korean Buddhist temple; the central temple of Cheondoism stands nearby, finished in 1921. Calligraphy is demonstrated on the street daily.

The Korean protective charm does not come from a shop here, and the distinction is the point of this record. A pujŏk — bujeok — is produced by a mudang, a shaman, usually built out of hanja characters, handed to clients at the end of a rite and stuck to the inside wall of a house. Mudang are concentrated in Seoul more thickly than anywhere else in the country except Jeju; a late 20th-century Korean Gallup survey found 38 per cent of South Korean adults had consulted one. Inference — what Insadong sells is the material and the antique, not the charm; the charm is commissioned, and this atlas has read no source that puts a bujeok counter on this street.

Trading, with the backstreets gentrified into cafés and guest houses. About 100,000 visitors on a Sunday were reported in 2000. No day is marked below: the shops keep their own hours and nobody publishes them as one timetable.