Pimatgol means “the alley for avoiding horses.” People who would otherwise have had to prostrate themselves at the roadside and show respect whenever they encountered a high official on horseback along Jongno’s main avenue chose the backstreet instead. As soup-and-rice restaurants, taverns, inns, and tearooms gathered along it, the alley became the center of everyday life for Jongno’s common people. In other words, a route devised to avoid power became a commercial district.
The alley did not disappear all at once
According to Seoul Future Heritage materials, South Pimatgol disappeared during construction of Subway Line 1 in 1974, and some 20 businesses closed during downtown redevelopment in 2003. Some long-established restaurants in Cheongjin-dong relocated to one side of a new high-rise building. Their names and businesses remained, but the alley’s width, low roofs, and the relationships between shops that once faced each other changed. The question remains whether moving an old business into a new building truly amounts to preserving an alley.
In 2026, Jongno’s backstreets returned underground
In July 2026, the Insa-dong Urban Heritage Exhibition Hall officially opened on the former site of Pimatgol in Jongno 2-ga. The exhibition hall restores the 4,810-square-meter excavation site in the Gongpyeong district in situ, allowing visitors to look down on the arrangement of Jongno’s licensed shops, the Pimat route, individual storefronts, and drainage channels in the 16th century. The alley that disappeared above ground can now be read underground in its exact original location.
What should visitors distinguish?
Not every section now bearing a “Pimatgol” sign is the old alley preserved exactly as it was. Surviving alleys, refurbished and reconstructed routes, restaurants relocated inside buildings, and archaeological remains preserved after excavation are all intermingled. There is no need to dismiss any one of them as fake. Visitors should, however, walk with an awareness that they represent different methods of preservation in order to see the changes this alley has undergone.