Seoul Development and Gendered Sense of Place

Understanding the history of urban development and the various social devices that are manipulated in the process and the entity that allocates the direction of human resources are important points that can research that society easier. Seoul was considered as a key area of ​​post-war reconstruction in terms of policy. The logic of Seoul's development has weakened the sense of social solidarity by taking for granted hierarchical superiority over non-Seoul regions and encouraging hostility and division between people. This paper examined Kim Seungok's short story “Mujin Travel” and Kim Geumhee's short story “Love in Too Middle of the Day” critically, based on this awareness of the problem. These two works intertextually contain the unfair development history of Seoul and provide an opportunity to examine differentially gendered sense of place. “Mujin Travel” covers the urban development period in the first half of the 1960s and clearly shows the desire of the people of the time heading to Seoul and the hierarchical structure of women’s exclusion that is revealed in this process. “Love in Too Middle of the Day” contains the ups and downs that occurred as the 1960s-style Seoul development pattern revealed in “Mujin Travel” continued for about half a century. In this rapid change, the author shows the possibility and impossibility of a consciousness that can overcome the gender discriminatory sense of place.