Kang Dong Yi / Dunchondong / Thurs 1-3

            The place that has the most significance for me is Dunchondong. It is a small town in the outskirts of Seoul. My mother and father, as young couples, did not have much money to afford an apartment in Seoul. However, they felt that children ought to be reared up in Seoul, so they had selected one of the cheapest apartments in Seoul. In Dunchondong, Gangdong-gu, there is are many apartments that had been built in the 80s by the government. The numerous gray apartments form a large town.

 

            Because it is an apartment district built in the 80s, there are many remarkable things about this town. First of all, the apartment district is so full of nature. The apartments are mostly 5 to 10 stories tall, and some do not even have elevators. The apartments have been space relatively far apart that there are grass patches and hills where there are no apartments.

 

            Another thing that I feel remarkable about the town is that everyone has lived there for a long time. I myself had moved to Dunchondong Jugong Apartment district when I had been 5, and I spent most of my life there. I remember my childhood so vividly, I remember the green hills being covered with snow in the winter, and how the children ran up the hills with cardboard boxes to slide down the hill. I remember how an old lady sold chicks in cardboard boxes, and how my friends – who are still my good neighbors – and I bought the chicks and they had died just the they after, inducing us to cry.

           

            I remember how I grew up in the apartment district. I still walk the road that I used to walk to get to elementary school and high school, and I still take the subway that I used to take with my mother. I now buy coffee and cans of beer from the GS superstore that I used to visit with my mother, throwing tantrums for chocolate bars and small drinks for children with little toys attached.

 

            The sad thing about this apartment district is that it's going to disappear soon. The old apartments built by the government in the 80s are starting to be demolished, and my apartment district is no exception to this trend. Negotiations are taking place, and though the negotiation between the residents and the construction corporation had been creaky, it is ending, and my neighbors are already moving away to their new homes. I see it every day, giant trucks parking in the parking lots and my neighbors saying good-bye. I also realize that the apartment is indeed old, with the walls cracking and stained.  

 

            I am moving myself – my parents have bought a new apartment in Jungrang-gu, for my brother is going to become a university student next year. However, I have rented a room not too far away from my current home because I have become attached to my hometown that I had spent the majority of my life. The apartment has gotten old, my younger brother has grown up, but I am not going anywhere away from the town.