Some Critical Remarks on the Urban Semiotics of Seoul

Abstract

Although Seoul has such a long history of more than six hundreds years as the capital city, it seems still far from laying groundwork for methodological approach or comprehensive documentation of academic discipline designated as ‘Seoul Studies’, some of which place great emphasis on its historical and geographical studies rather than integrated research or semiotic analysis of the city in full range. Considering present conditions, this paper firstly aims to provide some critical examination of the urban history of Seoul, and then attempts to investigate ideological foundations of urban establishment of Seoul from semiotic perspectives as well as diachronic representation of historical changes in its urban space. In order to project semiotic and humanistic viewpoint within the historical evolution of urban space in Seoul, this paper will present urban semiotic descriptions of Seoul’s unique process of modernity as a metropolis. The historical identity and signification of Seoul has been effaced successively and thus fallen into obscurity. Therefore, my research is to discover and illuminate how to make a city a more ‘human place’, which can proceed from historical amnesia to the memorable city.