Ruth Glass in 1964, and how the word is said to travel to Korea

The notes treat gentrification as a theory of social, cultural, class and spatial change in a worn-down city. It is often rendered, they say, as the upgrading of ordinary housing, and is sometimes mixed with words such as urban regeneration or neighbourhood redevelopment. Ruth Glass, in Britain in 1964, is credited with the name, for middle-class people moving into renovated London houses and pushing out working-class residents.

In Korea, the idea is said to have been introduced around the 2000s, as talk of redevelopment, urban regeneration and improvement grew. After 2010, the notes say, case studies and empirical work on Korean sites multiplied. Renewal can bring visitors, higher property values and chances for residents, they write, but also the loss of a place’s character, sharp rent rises, forced moves, and disputes between landlords and tenants, especially where commercial space changes hands. Shin Hanna, in 2017, contrasts a Western pattern of gradual, block-by-block middle-class change with a Korean pattern in which tourism and a rediscovery of local character draw outside attention. Jeon Hyun-ju, in 2012, describes arrivals of middle-class or better households into old housing, low-income occupants pushed to the edges, and a neighbourhood made more exclusive. Those readings stay in 2017 and 2012.

Sangam-dong’s index, and two hanok districts that filled with shops

To judge whether gentrification has occurred, the notes look for rising land prices, the departure of earlier residents, more commercial premises and more passing trade. A study that applied a ‘gentrification index’ of neighbourhood improvement, they say, found Sangam-dong the highest in Seoul. Designated a housing-development district in 1997, it grew quickly between 2000 and 2010; World Cup Park was laid out in 2002, and the Digital Media City, an IT and culture cluster, shifted the economic base toward higher-order services, after Oh Chang-hwa, 2017. The ranking and those dates stay in that study’s window, and are not recast as later official totals.

Bukchon and Seochon, among Seoul’s denser hanok districts, are offered as further cases. Official land prices rose while population and the number of households fell, and facilities for residents turned into facilities for tourists, after Shin Hanna, 2017. From 2000, a Bukchon improvement project and other conservation rules began; once worn low-rise housing, the two districts are described as representative urban-hanok areas with about 3,000 shops. Quiet tourism for residents is being encouraged, the notes say, but the process is almost finished, and a return to the earlier state is hard. That shop count and that judgment stay in the 2017 account.

Samcheong-dong, Gyeongnidan-gil, and figures left in their years

Samcheong-dong, long an urban hanok neighbourhood with a history of its own, is treated as another commercial turn in the same family as Bukchon. After Junghakcheon was covered in the 1970s, shops for residents and for public employees arrived; in the 1990s large galleries and museums settled an image of a street of culture and art; from 2000, expensive designer and craft shops changed the mix. Official land prices, the notes say, rose by as much as five times compared with the early 2000s, and the people remodeling hanok were mostly not original residents but artists, architects and wealthier arrivals from elsewhere, after Jeong Ji-hee, 2007. Those multiples stay in that 2007 window.

Gyeongnidan-gil is placed in Itaewon 2-dong, hemmed in by Beotigogae and a military base at Yongsan. Distinctive shops run by designers, artists and chefs, and new cultural spaces, are said to have made the street well known, with land prices rising faster than in the surroundings. The notes also list Hongdae, a Yongsan redevelopment district, and Daeyeon 3-dong in Nam-gu, Busan, as further cases, but the extracted core does not describe them, so those descriptions are not added here. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. Notes on features and problems of gentrification through Korean cases, defining the term after Ruth Glass (1964) and later Korean readings by Shin Hanna (2017) and Jeon Hyun-ju (2012).
2. Sangam-dong as the highest in a Seoul gentrification-index study, with the 1997 designation, growth between 2000 and 2010, World Cup Park in 2002, and Digital Media City, after Oh Chang-hwa (2017); figures left in that window.
3. Bukchon and Seochon after Shin Hanna (2017); Samcheong-dong after Jeong Ji-hee (2007); Gyeongnidan-gil in Itaewon 2-dong as described in the notes.

Last updated: 14 November 2026