Seoul opens 30-year archive of urban metamorphosis

In 1995, as the capital of Korea hurtled toward a high-tech future, municipal officials quietly launched a panoramic survey to document its rapidly changing face.

Decades before high-resolution smartphones and digital mapping, the project aimed to preserve the memory of a metropolis in perpetual motion.

Now, 30 years and over 40,000 photographs later, the Seoul Metropolitan Government is opening this vast visual archive to the public.

Marking the completion of its seventh five-year recording cycle spanning from 1995 to 2025, the city has launched an extensive exhibition, “Seoul, a City Painted by Time,” running across both physical and digital spaces.

The landmark project has served as an essential tool for urban planning and public policy.

Every five years, photographers have returned to identical coordinates across the capital to capture the dramatic, often unrecognizable shifts in the landscape.

The stark evolution of Seoul’s key districts highlights the sheer scale of this transformation: rural farmlands in Magok, a district on the city's western edge, have been entirely repla ...