A 44-year-old bar helped invent modern Euljiro. It closed in 2022 — not because it failed, but because the person who bought its building turned out to be a competitor. That single story explains this district's redevelopment better than any policy document does.
The story that summarizes everything
Fact Eulji OB Bear was Korea's first draft beer pub and one of the businesses credited with starting the beer-alley culture here. It ran for 44 years and was a registered "hundred-year store" government candidate — a program recognizing long-running small businesses. In 2022, after a dispute with its building owner, it suddenly closed. It later emerged that most of the building's ownership had been acquired by the owner of Manseon Hoftbar, the rival chain that now dominates the same alley. This is not redevelopment in the sense of a city plan and a bulldozer. It's a quieter, more common version: popularity drives up property value, an outside buyer moves in, and the business that helped create that popularity cannot afford to stay.
The same pattern, three times
The printing alley (Episode 3) has a 600-year lineage now inside a formal redevelopment zone, with promises of replacement facilities that have gone unfulfilled. Sewoon Sangga (Episode 4) is being partly demolished even as new tenants move into its maker spaces. The beer alley (Episode 5) lost its outdoor tables in 2022 and its founding pub the same year. Rising visibility → rising property value → pressure on the small businesses that created that visibility. Same shape, three times.
What this means for a visitor
This isn't a call to feel guilty. Tourism didn't single-handedly cause any of this. But being aware is different from being paralyzed. Spend at long-running, independent businesses when you have a choice. Don't treat a closure as "quaint decline" — ask what actually happened. The honest answer usually involves a landlord, a redevelopment notice, or a rent increase. And come back: a district changing this fast rewards people who check in more than once.