As 2025 winds down, I’ve been reviewing the year, and my monthlong stay in Seoul’s Daerim-dong Chinatown this past May was one of the highlights. It got me thinking about the history and future of Chinatowns in South Korea.
After diplomatic relations were established between South Korea and China in 1992, Joseonjok, or ethnic Koreans with Chinese citizenship, began arriving as migrant laborers and settled in Garibong-dong near the Guro Industrial Complex. In the early 2000s, redevelopment forced them to nearby Daerim-dong and Guro-gu. Today, about 40 percent of the population of Daerim-dong are Chinese nationals, 90 percent of which are Joseonjok, making the area the largest Chinatown in the country.
Though much smaller than Daerim-dong, Yeonnam-dong and Yeonhui-dong in northwestern Seoul represent another type of Chinatown. These Chinatowns center on Hwagyo, or ethnic Chinese who trace their roots back to Chinese migrants from the late 19th century to the early 20th century. In the 1960s, President Park Chung-hee greatly restricted commercial activities of Hwagyo, causing many to emigrate to Taiwan or other countries. Restrictions were loosened in the 1980s, and many of the Hwagyo moved to Yeonnam-dong and Yeonhui-dong, but the population has since declined as the area has become more commercial.
Interestingly, Chinatowns in Seoul — Daerim-dong, Garibong-dong, Yeonnam-dong, Yeonhui-dong — do not have many Han Chinese, the predominant ethnic group in China.
Most Chinese students in South Korea prefer to live in areas near their university, but a concentration has emerged in Hoegi-dong. Chinese and foreigners of other nationalities have moved into the area around Konkuk University Station as Joseonjok moved out. Seoul’s largest Chinatowns are home to descendants of Korean and Chinese diaspora communities that emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Chinatown in Incheon offers an interesting contrast against Seoul. Park Chung-hee’s policies left the Incheon Chinatown as the only clearly defined one in the country. It too shrank as the Hwagyo population declined, but after the establishment of diplomatic relations, interest in and exchanges with China grew, boosting the prospects of Chinatown.
In 2003, the city of Incheon took an interest in the area and began promoting it as a tourist attraction, and it has since become the most popular attraction in the city. However, as a 2007 article in The New York Times noted, the area had few Chinese people, including Hwagyo, and had become more of a tourist-oriented food theme park.
In Busan, the city began efforts in 1999 to revive what was once a vibrant Chinatown across from Busan Station. Another wave of investment followed in 2007, and the area became a popular tourist attraction in the city. But like Incheon, few Chinese people live there, and in recent years, the area has attracted Central Asian businesses, giving it a multicultural vibe.
In 2008, the popularity of Incheon’s Chinatown prompted the city of Seoul to draft a plan for a “tourist Chinatown” in Yeonnam-dong. The plan focused on developing specialized shopping districts drawing on architectural and cultural imagery from Chinese history. The city chose Yeonnam-dong because of its Hwagyo history, but proximity to the booming commercial area around Hongdae was also an important consideration.
The proposal marked a shift in ideas about Chinatowns in South Korea.
During the Park Chung-hee era and into the 1980s, the absence of a Chinatown was regarded by some Koreans as a symbol of Korea’s strong nationalist spirit that prevented other ethnic groups from taking root. Ideas began to shift in the 1990s in the wake of democratization and Asian economic crisis of 1997. In the 2000s, “global” everything was in, and the city of Seoul concluded that to become a “global city,” it too needed a Chinatown.
In the 2010s, things shifted again. Plans for a Yeonnam-dong Chinatown never got off the ground, and the capital city began to focus on other issues such as urban regeneration. Chinatowns in Incheon and Busan remain popular tourist attractions, but other Chinatowns appear to be weakening. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Joseonjok population in Daerim-dong and other areas began to drop.
Since the late 2010s, negative feelings toward China in South Korea have continued to rise, reaching a crisis point as far-right groups have gathered to chant anti-Chinese slogans in Chinatowns and areas frequented by Chinese tourists.
In the current “postglobal” era of nationalist populism, the idea of developing a commercial Chinatown in Yeonnam-dong seems like a quaint, almost archaic idea, but it was less than 20 years ago. It leaves me worried about the future of South Korea’s relations with its powerful neighbor.