[Cityscapes] Urban explorers connected worldwide despite pandemic

A visiting urban explorer walks carefully down the rooftop stairs after a snowfall, January 2014. / Courtesy of Ron Bandun

By Ron Bandun

Urban exploration is a global network. There are communities in nations around the world, especially in the West, but also in nearby China which has a huge community spread out across the country, from Beijing and Shanghai to Hong Kong and Shenzhen and Japan where it enjoys mainstream respectability.

In Korea, the community of people who scale rooftops, explore abandonments and plumb the depths of underground spaces is considerably smaller, for whatever reasons. This is despite the abundance of urban exploring sites here, even if they change rapidly over time. I've observed that local Koreans aren't so much turning a blind eye toward these spaces, as they are finding other ways to explore and make use of them while relying on different frameworks than the one that urban exploration provides, and their methods result in unique artistic outputs as well as sustainable repurposing of forgotten sites, often into galleries or cafes. But urban exploration would benefit any of these activities too.

As one of the few Korean blips on the global urban exploration network, I am occasionally contacted by visiting explorers passing through the country, often en route to other adventures elsewhere in the region. And whenever I get the call, I roll out the red carpet and demonstrate a little "jeong," showing them that Korea is not the "hermit kingdom" it had been seen as back when I was new here.

Many of these visitors have become dear friends, and a fair number have made return trips, even coming back to live. Some of them know each other, as one recommends to a friend visiting later to look us up in Seoul.

A visiting urban explorer takes a picture on top of an abandoned building in an urban renewal zone in Seoul's Geumho-dong, March 2015. / Courtesy of Ron Bandun

A fair number are Chinese, coming mainly from Hong Kong or Canada or stopping by Korea while traveling between the two. It's always amusing when a white guy is showing around non-Korean Asian visitors to Korea. In 2015 I was caught coming down from a rooftop in Myeong-dong with a well-known rooftopper, and the construction workers couldn't understand why they had to speak to me when they could speak to my Chinese Canadian friend. I had to facilitate by translating for them and explaining that he was a foreign tourist, and they let us go after he promised to erase some of his pictures ― they couldn't care less about what was on my memory card or what I was doing there. But we got through that experience unscathed, as always, and my friend was probably able to undelete the lost files later.

A visiting urban explorer carrying a backpack full of camera equipment shoots pictures on his phone in a redevelopment zone in Gyonam-dong, January 2014. / Courtesy of Ron Bandun

Another time, a visiting Russian explorer, while following me to a rooftop, noticed the branding of a POSCO "The Sharp" apartment building, and asked me "Why does that building have a hashtag?" I'm old school though; in my eyes it's an octothorpe.

I've had opportunities to guide drone pilots, well before Seoul became a regulatory no-fly zone. I saw drones in the sky over Namdaemun and Insa-dong, places where it would not just be illegal now but also impossible with commercial drones.

A visiting urban explorer peeks around inside a subway vent, February 2015. / Courtesy of Ron Bandun

So many good memories have been made by showing around overseas visitors, both for me and hopefully for them. But it's been a while since any such visitors have passed through Korea.

The pandemic has been rough on everyone, but one thing that has remained constant has been urban exploration. Those of us who engage in this hobby have been able to stay active throughout the last couple of years, as it's very easy, even preferred, to socially distance oneself from others while exploring. We have even found new ways to keep active, by meeting on Zoom to share adventure stories, catching up on our photos, self-publishing and art, and even having a few socially distanced meetups that conformed to government regulations. But even this community has been diminished by over two years of social distancing and travel restrictions.

A visiting urban explorer gets a big head at Seoul's Yongma Land, March 2. / Courtesy of Ron Bandun

So I was pretty surprised early this week when I got a message from a fellow urban explorer, someone I'd known for about a decade, but never met ― and didn't even know what they would look like. They were traveling to Korea for a legitimate business reason (which won't be divulged to protect their privacy), and under the current rules didn't have to stay quarantined at the airport.

They had been told beforehand that they wouldn't be allowed to dine in restaurants, and to be careful about bringing back any souvenirs. I updated that information and took my friend out to a Korean barbecue restaurant in central Seoul, and then we started to hit rooftops. We got on top of one, and then struck out with another where we found a large empty lobby monitored carefully by a single security guard. We hit a third building, and while we didn't make it to the roof, we ended up in a vacated but still-furnished boardroom with incredible cityscape views, where we stayed drinking and trading stories until early in the morning.

That's just the sort of hobby urban exploration is, where you might not expect it one minute, but next minute you're rushing to unlock the secrets to some building you've found, or you're welcoming fellow explorers from overseas with a last-minute-planned whirlwind tour of the city.

A visiting urban explorer climbs around machinery at an abandoned railyard in central Seoul, October 2014. / Courtesy of Ron Bandun

Although it seems this pandemic is far from over, the resumption of international urban exploration, even if done while obeying strict quarantine rules, seems worth celebrating.

Ron Bandun is an urban explorer. He has been visiting forgotten, abandoned and forbidden spaces in Korea for over 17 years, documenting the changes and conflicts of the urban environment.