VOL.74/2024.09

 

[Into the Book ①]

Where the Children from the Book
Children of Kwaeng-I-Bu-Ri Village Used to Play

Mansuk-dong, Dong-gu, Incheon: Time Travel with the Book

 

2023.08.07

 

 

 

The Kwaeng-i-bu-ri Village is the oldest poor neighborhood in Incheon. (...)
Over the years, the village turned from a forest of pine trees into a factory town
full of smokestacks and shanty houses.

 

 

Children of Kwaeng-I-Bu-Ri Village (Changbi Publishers), published in 2000, is a children’s book featuring the life of twin sisters Sook-Hee (the main character) and Sook-Ja living in a poor daldongne neighborhood. The word “daldongne” means a poor village situated on the slopes of a hill in Korea, and it is said to have deriven from its proximity to the moon. It is widely known that Kim Jung-Mi, the writer, had once run a study room called “a small school by the railroad” for children from low-income families in the Kwaeng-i-bu-ri Village located in Mansuk-dong, Dong-gu, Incheon, and wrote the book based on the experience. Perhaps because she reflected on her first-hand experience, the book is praised for capturing well the joy and sorrow of the poor. The book became a bestseller after it was selected as the first book in the TV show “Let’s Read Books” aired on MBC, which led to the book-reading frenzy in Korea in the early 2000s. In 2013, it became the first children’s book to sell more than 2 million copies. Now, what does Kwaeng-i-bu-ri Village look like today, 20 years after the book was first published? Following is a trip to Mansuk-dong, Dong-gu, Incheon, in search of traces of the main characters in the book.

 

* K-Book Trends Vol. 34 – Go to the interview with writer Kim Jung-Mi

 

 

Past and present of the poor daldongne

 

There were a number of big daldongnes in Mansuk-dong, Dong-gu, Incheon. The region was the home to people with low incomes, including the Kwaeng-i-bu-ri Village, the background of the book Children of Kwaeng-I-Bu-Ri Village. The village grew as the habitat for thousands of people throughout Korea’s modern history, but currently, the size has been cut down significantly due to the community’s disintegration and gentrification as the country went through the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997 and successive redevelopment plans since the 2000s. The majority of the residents living in the village today are seniors, and it has become difficult to find children playing around in the village as less than 10 children and adolescents are living there.
It is indeed hard to find traces of the original Kwaeng-i-bu-ri Village, but don’t give up yet if you are thinking of traveling to the village – the village has renovated parts of the neighborhood to welcome visitors. On the site of the “North Coast Line” railroad, which appears in the conversation between Sook-Ja and her father in the book, you will see the “Wonkwaengiburi Street.” The word “Wonkwaengiburi” is the name affectionately used by the villagers, meaning “the region which was called the Kwaengiburi Village from the beginning” in Korean. As soon as you enter the specialty street, you will be greeted by colorful railroad tracks, trains, and pictures of landscapes. Instead of completely demolishing the neighborhood, the dark and potentially desolate shanty town streets were painted and tidied up to create a clean, yet nostalgic place.

 

 

Apart from Wonkwaengiburi Street, the murals drawn in parts of the Kwaeng-i-bu-ri Village have turned the region into a more vibrant place than before. Abandoned houses have been transformed into small but compact art museums. Also, the “Woori Art Museum” run in two buildings – an exhibition hall and the educational hall – exhibits works by young and talented authors in Korea, providing authors a chance to open their own exhibition, and is a cultural hub for the residents. The museum opens themed exhibitions every certain period displaying different artworks, and you can enjoy pictures by artist Choi Bit-na from July 4 to August 20 on the theme of “chunks.” As the educational hall sometimes exhibits works by the villagers, it will be a great experience to stop by the place and appreciate different themed exhibitions if you visit Kwaeng-i-bu-ri Village.
A short walk out of Kwaeng-i-bu-ri Village will take you to “Hwadojin Park,” a park with beautiful flowers. The park was formerly a stronghold called “Hwadojin,” where the army used to station in the late Joseon Dynasty. And this is where the characters in the book Children of Kwaeng-I-Bu-Ri Village pick up empty bottles to make money. Hwadojin Park offers not only a wide walking path for residents to relax, but also a recreation of a stronghold to give you a sense of the atmosphere of Hwadojin during the late Joseon Dynasty, and an exhibition hall with military equipment and weapons from the late Joseon Dynasty.

 

 

 

The cement blocks crumbled down from Dong-Joon’s house,
the only house left in the empty site, (...)
and the planked attic was severely sunken on the left side,
making it look like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

 

 

Landscapes from the past that give you a deeper understanding of the book

 

If you want to see the daldongne where the characters from the book Children of Kwaeng-I-Bu-Ri Village used to live with your own eyes and have a deeper understanding of the book, why not visit Sudoguksan Museum of Housing and Living near the village? (Sudoguksan means waterworks mountain in Korean) The museum, built on the site where the daldongne used to be, is characterized by a two-story building with one floor and one basement that represents the scenery of that time without any alterations. The exhibition room on the first floor is themed around the scenery of Dongincheon in the 1960s and 1970s, and displays shops that actually existed alongside products from that time. You can also have your picture taken in a Korean school uniform from the 1970s. The basement exhibition room is an authentic reconstruction of what daldongne looked like at the time. The shacks were brought back from the site when daldongne was demolished, so you can feel like you’ve traveled back in time. Walking through the tightly packed houses and narrow alleys, you can easily imagine the characters living in daldongne.

 

 

The old-fashioned scenery continues as you head out of Dongincheon City. In particular, Memories Mirim Theater, which has been with the residents for over 60 years, and Baedari Secondhand Bookstore Alley, which was made famous by the drama “Guardian: The Lonely and Great God,” are stalwarts of the area long before the background setting of the book Children of Kwaeng-I-Bu-Ri Village. Imagine the characters in the book wandering around the secondhand bookstores and the theater. You too might be lucky enough to come across a used book waiting for a new owner or find your favorite classic or independent film.

 

 

The redevelopment of Manseok-dong, the area where the village is located, has caused many people to leave the neighborhood. While the “small school by the railroad” moved three times due to safety issues, the first building of the school, which was the background for the book Children of Kwaeng-I-Bu-Ri Village, was also demolished during the redevelopment project of the village. Like this, the Manseok-dong neighborhood has been undergoing a series of changes, leaving behind traces of the people who left. So, before they disappear into a few sentences in a book, why don’t you walk through Manseok-dong with the book and collect the traces of the village you can find today?

 

 

---

Written by Song Su-Hui