"They Come to See the Old Street. Soon There Won't Be One."

A rice seller on Ssajeon-geori describes how her street changed after 2022, from a working rice market into a destination for young visitors. Her regular customers have moved away, rents nearby have roughly doubled, and she expects to close next spring.

I have sold rice on Ssajeon-geori for thirty-four years. My husband's family opened the shop, and when he passed, I kept the door open. Next spring, I will close it for good.

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When I started, the street woke up before the sun. Trucks unloaded sacks at dawn, and restaurant owners from the market bought rice by the twenty-kilo bag. Neighbors paid at the end of the month. Children from the houses behind us did their homework on top of the rice sacks while their mothers shopped.

 

The change came quickly, around 2022. First, the warehouse next door became a café. It is a beautiful café, and they kept the old beams. Then the lines started. Now young people stand outside my shop every weekend and photograph my hand-painted sign. Some buy a small bag of rice as a souvenir. They are polite, and I am not angry at them.

But photographs do not pay rent. The restaurants that bought my rice have closed one by one, and the families who lived behind us moved to apartments farther out. The building was sold last year. The new owner told me the rent will go up a lot when my lease ends. Rents on this street have roughly doubled in two years. The legal protections for my lease ran out long ago, so I have no way to stay.

 

People say the neighborhood is "coming back to life." It was never dead. It was alive in a different way, slower and with older faces. The young people come here because the street looks old and real. When shops like mine are gone, I do not know what they will come to see.

 

I will miss the sound of the market opening in the morning. I will miss knowing my customers by their faces instead of their phones.

 

If you write about this street, please write that we were here.