Mixed use commercial building Korean Style

We had another fire this past week but this time it was located down the street from the school. I will post pictures later. What I wanted to blog on about was the quaint Korean style of mixed use of commercial space and the speed at which Koreans build stuff.

If you see the picture of the office building, on the first floor is a Hyundai dealership. The second floor is a restaurant, the third floor a pool hall, the fifth floor a dental clinic, the sixth floor a "nori ban" or Karaoke club and the last floor is a bar. This is Korean style for sure. You could spend the whole day in that building! Buy a car, eat lunch, drink some beers and play pool and make it in time for your dentist appt. After the dentist, go upstairs to the bar and later meet your friends to eat and drink at the "nori ban." Back in the States, as you know, this style of mixing commercial space does not happen like that. You have doctors and dentists in a building but not a pool hall, restaurant and a dentist.

Near my school is a three building complex called Digital Empire. It was set-up to attract technology companies to rent space. Inside the two block long complex, are dozens of restaurants, convenience shops like 7/11, shoes stores, businesses and apartment housing. Koreans build things quickly. A new subway stop will open in a year, after I am gone, that will decrease traffic and bring in business.

A restaurant down the street from my apt, closed up shop and went out of business--this week. A day later, all the restaurant equipment was gone. Yesterday and today they gutted the restaurant, took away the walls and tile and will install a new floor. That's fast. The workers shovel dirt and cement into this 50 lb bags, move them via cart and dump the dirt into the back of a big truck, all day long. A lot of intensive manual labor. Incredible.

Riding around today on my bicycle I realized that I can eat, shop and live a very complete life without a car. Korea is organized that way so using a car is superfluous. I like that a lot.