Sewoon Plaza(세운상가, 世運商街)

 

세운상가(世運商街, Sewoon Plaza)

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A residential and commercial complex located at 159, Cheonggyecheon-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul. To be exact, it is the first residential and commercial apartment in Korea, as it is called throughout the residential and commercial complex building group connecting Jongno 3-ga and Toegye-ro 3-ga. If it is admitted to be the first, the second residential and commercial complex built is Nakwon Shopping Center.

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It is said that the name Sewoon Shopping Center was given by Seoul Mayor Kim Hyun-ok at the time to mean that "the energy of the world should gather here." The location is a large residential and commercial complex with a length of about 1km (including Hyundai Shopping Center demolished in 2009) adjacent to Jongno 3-ga Station in the northernmost part and Chungmuro Station in the southernmost part.

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At first, it was a building with high-end apartments and shopping malls, but since the 1960s, this area has been a neighborhood where businesses fraudulent, fixed, and sold various junk from U.S. military units, and these shopping malls combined with these nearby businesses to become a mecca for home appliances and other electronics. Since then, as the development of Gangnam took place quickly, its advantages as a residential area disappeared, and eventually the upper apartments were also converted to technicians' workshops, effectively turning into shopping malls.

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Since then, the industrial group, which once had everything without it, began to exit from Yongsan Electronics Shopping Center, leading to the decline of commercial districts, and the building became a slum. As a result, the Seoul Metropolitan Government and the Cultural Heritage Administration opposed the plan, and all buildings were demolished and planned to be a green axis connecting Jongmyo Shrine and Namsan Mountain. The building itself did not strictly follow the building law at the time and was made on a trial basis, so it cannot meet modern standards through reconstruction from the beginning.[3][4]

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After Mayor Park Won-soon, it changed to regenerate buildings and shopping malls through the "re-seated project," but when Mayor Oh Se-hoon took office again, it was decided to develop a green ecological city center.

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Currently, the remaining shopping malls and buildings in Sewoon Shopping Center include Sewoon Electronics Shopping Center (5), Daelim Shopping Center, Cheonggye Shopping Center, Sampung Nexus Building (6), Hotel PJ [7], Inhyeon Shopping Center, and Jinyang Shopping Center. Often, these electronic shopping malls, hotels, and office buildings that cross the east and west of the Sewoon District are all called Sewoon Shopping Center.

- Tree Wiki -

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As the first residential and commercial complex in Korea, it became a specialty of Seoul until the 1970s.

At that time, celebrities, high-ranking government officials, and university professors moved into residential facilities and enjoyed a boom as the only general home appliance shopping mall in Korea.With the spread of personal computers in the late 1980s, most computers and software were traded here.

Lighting goods stores, including electrical and electronic parts stores, have also been built around the shopping mall.

- Naver -