After liberation, returning Koreans, Korean War refugees, and migrants seeking work in Seoul dramatically increased the city's population. Makeshift homes crowded the banks of Cheonggyecheon. Public land and vacant areas near the stream were relatively accessible places to settle, but they carried serious risks from floods, fire, and disease. Describing the shantytown only as illegal construction that spoiled the cityscape turns the consequences of war, housing scarcity, and inadequate public welfare into individual blame.
Covering the stream converted water into road and real estate
In 1958, Seoul began covering the stretch from Gwangtonggyo toward Ogansumun near Dongdaemun, and a major section of the new road was completed in 1961. The project concealed odor and pollution while creating vehicle lanes and commercial land. The water did not disappear; it was forced into a concrete structure below the city.
The elevated road embodied the speed of an industrializing city
An elevated roadway was constructed above Cheonggyecheon in the late 1960s. It moved vehicles and freight rapidly across downtown and influenced the expansion of the electrical, electronics, tool, and clothing districts nearby. In an era when traffic flow was treated as a central measure of urban development, the road was valued more highly than the stream beneath it.
Demolition and relocation created new communities elsewhere
Shacks, stalls, and small workshops along the stream became targets for removal as the covering and road projects advanced. Some residents were sent to peripheral resettlement areas, while merchants moved into other markets and commercial buildings. Cheonggyecheon's modernization was both the reorganization of one corridor and the displacement of poverty and labor to other parts of the city.