Euljiro After the Bulldozers: What Survived Seoul's Old Drinking Alleys

Why Euljiro Is Back in the News

Euljiro, the print-shop-and-drinking-alley district in central Seoul, is turning up in the English-language press again this month - not because something new opened, but because reporters are circling back to ask what actually happened after the bulldozers left. A Korea Times feature published July 10, 2026, paired with a documentary called Living Euljiro, reports that technicians in the district’s manufacturing alleys were given roughly 10 days to clear out machinery and inventory - as much as 10 tons per shop - before demolition crews moved in.

That demolition is not new; it is about four years old. Zone 3 of the Sewoon Redevelopment Promotion District, which covered Euljiro’s workshop rows, began official demolition in February 2022 and finished by February 2023, according to Seoul’s public-notice gazette. What keeps pulling journalists back is that the district refuses to resolve into a clean before-and-after story. Some of Euljiro’s most-cited old restaurants and bars did not survive in place - they were evicted, closed, and in a few cases reopened blocks away. Others, tucked into alleys the redevelopment zone never reached, are still serving the same tables they had in the 1980s.

Analysis: For a US reader, the closest comparison is SoHo in Manhattan - a manufacturing-loft district that got partly emptied, partly preserved, and partly rebuilt into something that looks similar but functions completely differently. Euljiro is mid-transition in the same way: half torn down for high-rises, half still working as the last analog manufacturing block in downtown Seoul, and a small but growing slice repurposed into bars and studios that trade on exactly the grit redevelopment is erasing next door.

Nogari Alley and the Return of Euljiro OB Bear

Nogari Alley is the strip of outdoor plastic tables where Euljiro’s beer-and-dried-pollack tradition actually started. Euljiro OB Bear opened here in November 1980 as the first bar to pair draft beer with nogari - dried, unseasoned pollack torn by hand and dipped in gochujang mayo - and by August 2018 it held an official 100-Year Store designation from Korea’s Ministry of SMEs and Startups, a government program built to protect small, long-running businesses.

The designation did not stop a landlord dispute that started in 2018 from ending in eviction. OB Bear was forcibly removed from its original spot on April 21, 2022 - reportedly the sixth attempted forced execution in that dispute - and stayed closed for almost two years before reopening at a new address in Euljiro 3-ga in February 2024. It is open today, pouring the same draft beer, a few blocks from where it started.

Analysis: Seoul’s 2015 historic-center plan had already classified businesses like this one as “living heritage” - a category that, unlike “future heritage,” does not block redevelopment if the landowner and developer agree to move forward, which is roughly what happened here. If you’re picturing something like a US historic-landmark designation that freezes a building in place, that’s the wrong model; this is closer to a plaque than a shield.

Golbaengi Alley and Pungnam Golbaengi

A few minutes’ walk away, Golbaengi Alley runs between Euljiro 3-ga Station and Jungbu Police Station. It formed in the late 1960s when small shops started selling seasoned canned whelk - golbaengi-muchim, a spicy, chewy sea-snail salad tossed with scallion, cucumber, and sesame - as a drinking snack for the printing-district workers who filled the neighborhood on weeknights.

Pungnam Golbaengi has operated on the alley since 1975 and is now run by a later generation of the family that founded it. A serving of the spicy whelk salad runs about 29,000 won - roughly $21 at recent exchange rates - usually ordered alongside soju or beer and split across the table rather than eaten alone.

Frozen Pork Belly at Munkyung Sikdang

Frozen pork belly, or naengdong samgyeopsal, sounds like a downgrade to most American diners raised on the idea that fresh means better and frozen means cut corners. In Euljiro it’s the point: freezing the belly firms up the fat so it can be shaved into thin, uniform sheets that curl and crisp fast on a hot grill, instead of the thicker fresh-cut slices that render slower and greasier.

Munkyung Sikdang, a roughly 30-year-old restaurant working this style, serves domestic pork at about 17,000 won a portion - close to $12 - grilled tableside the way most Korean barbecue in the US is served, minus the exhaust-hood theatrics some American Koreatown spots add for the room.

Eulji-myeonok and the Fight Over Pyeongyang Naengmyeon

Eulji-myeonok opened in Ipjeong-dong, Euljiro, in 1985, serving Pyeongyang-style naengmyeon - buckwheat noodles in a cold, faintly tart broth, a world away from the spicy bibim naengmyeon most US Korean restaurants default to. It became one of the most name-checked naengmyeon addresses in Seoul, the kind of place regulars argued about versus its cross-town rivals.

It also became the clearest legal test of how far a “living heritage” label actually reaches. By the time the dispute over its building reached the courts, the Sewoon Zone 3-2 redevelopment operator had already acquired 102 of the 103 business locations in that zone - Eulji-myeonok was the last holdout. On June 14, 2022, the Seoul High Court partially granted the operator’s request to take possession of the building. The restaurant closed on demolition that year and reopened in Nakwon-dong, near Jongno 3-ga, on April 22, 2024, about two years later and roughly a mile from the original address.

Practical: If you’re chasing the “original” location, it no longer exists. The current Nakwon-dong restaurant is the only one operating under the name, and it’s the one worth the trip.

New Bars: MXL and Euljiro’s Natural Wine Scene

Not all of Euljiro’s redevelopment story is eviction and demolition. Some of it is adaptive reuse. MXL, a natural wine bar built inside a former printing-and-packaging building, made Star Wine List’s 2026 guide to Seoul’s natural wine bars - a sign that Euljiro’s industrial shell buildings, the same low-rise concrete blocks that once housed presses and binderies, are now valuable precisely because they were never renovated.

Analysis: For a US traveler, this is the same move Brooklyn’s Bushwick and Greenpoint made a decade earlier - old manufacturing floors with exposed pipe and bare concrete becoming the default aesthetic for a wine bar rather than a compromise. The difference in Euljiro is proximity: MXL and its neighbors sit a few blocks from print shops still operating today, not decades removed from the industry they’re borrowing atmosphere from.

Inside the Sewoon Redevelopment District

All of this - the evictions, the reopenings, the wine bars moving into old print shops - traces back to one planning decision. Seoul designated the Sewoon Redevelopment Promotion District, covering Euljiro and Ipjeong-dong, by city notice in October 2006, with the formal redevelopment plan decided in March 2009. It took over a decade for the plan to reach street level: Zone 3’s demolition ran from February 2022 to February 2023.

What that zone contained is easy to undercount from street level. Seoul Metropolitan Government’s own online catalog lists more than 1,100 printing-district businesses in the Euljiro-Chungmuro area, a cluster press coverage describes as having handled roughly two-thirds of Seoul’s total printing industry - presses, binderies, metal workshops, and tool merchants networked tightly enough that a single job could move between four or five shops within a couple of blocks. Large sections of that network are gone now, replaced by construction sites and, eventually, high-rises.

Old Euljiro Meets Hipjiro

What’s left is a genuinely split neighborhood, and that split is why Euljiro keeps generating stories instead of settling into either “historic district” or “redeveloped business zone.” Around Sewoon Sangga and Bangsan Market, young entrepreneurs have moved into the surviving old buildings and opened cafes, bars, and small workshops - enough of them that the area picked up the nickname Hipjiro, a portmanteau that only really makes sense once you’ve walked past a shuttered machine shop and a natural wine bar on the same block. The area’s printing and metalworking history is popularly described as carrying something like 600 years of continuous use as part of Seoul’s city center, dating to the founding of the Joseon Dynasty - a claim you’ll see on a historical marker along Toegye-ro rather than in any government registry.

Practical: Euljiro is walkable from Euljiro 1(il)-ga through Euljiro 4-ga on subway lines 2 and 3, and the old-school alleys - Nogari Alley, Golbaengi Alley, the frozen-pork-belly restaurants - run loudest after dark, roughly 6 p.m. onward, when the plastic stools fill up. The newer wine bars keep later, more conventional bar hours. Budget one evening per zone rather than trying to cover both; the distances are short, but the crowds and noise level make it a slow crawl, not a quick loop.