The plant linked river water to household taps
Seonyu Water Purification Plant operated from 1978 to 2000 and supplied southwestern Seoul. River water did not become safe in one step: treatment involved chemical dosing, settling, filtration, storage and pumping. Today’s basins and buildings held different parts of that sequence. Use the site map to separate sedimentation tanks, filters, thickeners and the pumping building. Calling it simply an abandoned factory removes the public service that supported ordinary urban life.
Concrete scale reflects urban demand
Large basins and repeated columns were designed to process and hold water at controlled rates. As Seoul’s population and industry grew from the 1970s through the 1990s, stable waterworks became increasingly important. Capacity and service-area figures can change by date and expansion phase, so one number should not represent all 22 years. The depth, channels and passages let visitors imagine water moving through gravity, pumps and waiting time, with operators monitoring a process that never appeared at the household tap.
Regeneration did not erase every structure
After closure, the park design retained selected facilities and gave them new uses. Filter-bed columns became the Garden of Green Columns, while treatment basins became spaces for plants, water and exhibitions. This is neither a museum freezing the plant exactly as it was nor restoration to untouched nature. It is adaptive regeneration: structures without their old function remain legible through new programs. Signs help distinguish original industrial fabric from later stairs, planting and safety additions.
Do not exaggerate plants as a complete treatment system
Aquatic gardens demonstrate principles of water circulation and purification, but their small ecological channels do not replace the former municipal process. Producing drinking water requires controlled treatment, testing and equipment. It is more accurate to compare industrial treatment with ecological water cycles than to claim plants solve all contamination. Do not touch water, collect plants or cross rails around slippery basin edges. Educational interpretation must not turn a working public-health system into a simple natural miracle.
Follow the former process through the park
Begin with the old plant map in the Story Hall, then examine the Water Purification Basin, Garden of Green Columns and Garden of Time. Exhibition hours and access may change, so check current notices. Rather than collecting poetic names, trace where water entered, waited and left. Never descend into closed structures or damage concrete surfaces. The industrial heritage shows how much space, machinery, testing and human labor Seoul’s ordinary water supply required.