Jayu Park (자유공원) is the hill I think of whenever someone asks me what old Incheon was like. It covers the whole of Eungbongsan (응봉산), a low hill rising behind Incheon Station and Chinatown, and from the top you look straight out over the port, the cranes, and the open water of the Yellow Sea. … Read more
Wolmido Incheon is the place nearly every person in this city has been at least once — on a school trip, on a first date, or on an ordinary Saturday when there was nothing else to do. It is Incheon’s signature seaside strip: amusement rides, arcades, food stalls, and a waterfront promenade at the end … Read more
I grew up in this neighborhood, and Moraenae Market Incheon was just part of the landscape — the place my family went for produce, not a destination you’d plan a trip around. It’s only looking back that I realize how much that kind of ordinary familiarity is exactly what a market like this represents: not … Read more
Sorae Port sits at the bottom edge of Incheon, where a tidal creek separates the city from Gyeonggi Province. It is a working fishing harbor with a large seafood market attached, and it draws enormous weekend crowds from across the metropolitan area. Here is the honest version: the fish market itself is not the reason … Read more
Dongincheon Station is not a place people plan to visit. It is a stop on Line 1 that most travelers pass through on the way to Chinatown, two stations further west. The area around it looks like what it is — a downtown that stopped being the downtown about forty years ago. What is easy … Read more
Most foreign visitors to Korea skip Incheon Chinatown for a simple reason: a Chinatown in Korea sounds redundant. If you have already seen the ones in San Francisco or London, why spend an hour on the subway for a smaller version? That logic misses what this place actually is. Incheon Chinatown is not an outpost … Read more
Sinpo International Market has a claim most Korean markets cannot make: two dishes that are now sold in every corner of the country were either invented here or made famous here. One of them was an accident. The other was a small shop’s idea that spread nationwide without anyone planning it. Neither is marked with … Read more
Bupyeong Station Incheon sits above a shopping arcade so large that getting lost in it is not a beginner’s mistake — it is the normal experience, including for people who have used it for years. The numbers explain why. In 2014 the arcade was officially certified as having the most shops inside a single underground … Read more
Most visitors to Incheon see exactly two things: the airport, and whatever they pass on the express train to Seoul. The city of three million people in between goes unnoticed. Incheon Subway Line 1 is the spine of that city. It runs north to south, from a new town most Koreans have never visited to … Read more