Yangnim Penguin Village

The name is local and affectionate: the alley's residents are mostly elderly, many with bad knees, and the way they walk was said to look like penguins. After a fire cleared a plot in the 2010s, neighbours filled the lane with what they had - old clocks, radios, sewing machines, cassette players, kettles, farm tools, telephones - fixed to the walls and fences until the whole street became a collection of twentieth-century domestic Korea. It is not curated and nothing is labelled; things are simply there, rusting quietly. A small cafe and a shop have appeared but the lane has stayed a lane. It sits in Yangnim-dong, Gwangju's old missionary quarter, where early Western-style houses, a church and a hospital from the turn of the last century still stand, so the alley combines with a walk through a genuinely unusual district.

What's there

• The wall of salvaged objects - clocks, radios, tools, telephones.
• The uncurated feel - nothing labelled, nothing arranged.
• The Yangnim quarter - early missionary-era houses and church around it.
• The lane itself - still residential, still ordinary.

When to go

Any season. Mornings are quiet. It is small, so combine it with the Yangnim historic walk rather than travelling for the alley alone.

What to expect

It is one short alley and takes twenty minutes. People live here. Objects rust and get removed, so it changes. There is no interpretation of any kind.

Nearby

The Yangnim missionary quarter is around it; the Asia Culture Center is in central Gwangju.