Baedari Secondhand Bookstore Alley
A surviving Incheon secondhand-book district where postwar trade, family bookshops and a resident fight against road construction became part of the same neighborhood history
Secondhand books, independent bookstores, postwar urban history, neighborhood preservation, small exhibitions, poetry culture and slow walks through old Incheon
A compact low-rise neighborhood of surviving secondhand bookstores, narrow streets, murals and small cultural spaces, centered on a book alley that once held more than forty shops
Baedari matters because preservation here was not a municipal theme applied afterward: booksellers and residents had to argue, protest and spend their own money to keep the neighborhood from being physically broken apart
Character
Kwak Hyun-sook had never staged a protest before. When Incheon announced an industrial road through Baedari in 2006, the Abel Bookstore owner made her first banner and stood alone in front of city hall, arguing that the project would split the neighborhood in two
She had opened a secondhand bookshop near Baedari in 1973. At one point she closed it and spent two years trying other work—house building, factory labor and domestic service—before returning to books. In a 2023 interview, she said the detour convinced her that loneliness crossed social rank and that books could answer part of it
In 2007 she put her own money into Abel Exhibition Hall, adding poetry rooms, book displays and readings beside the shop. The cultural layer here came out of a bookseller’s decision to stay
The experience
Baedari is a small surviving cluster rather than the forty-shop market remembered from its peak decades. The remaining bookstores keep different personalities: Abel is dense and long-running; Hanmi’s yellow facade is one of the alley’s most recognizable fronts; other shops continue the mix of used literature, schoolbooks, old magazines and specialist finds
The books are still the point, which has occasionally produced friction with tourism. When the television drama *Goblin* sent visitors to Hanmi in 2017, its second-generation owner Chang told *The Jakarta Post* that many came only to photograph the filming location; the repeated shutter sounds disturbed his regular customers
Outside the shops, murals and small cultural spaces spread the visit into the surrounding low-rise neighborhood. Abel Exhibition Hall is the clearest extension of the bookstore culture into local history, exhibitions and poetry rather than a separate attraction
History
After liberation in 1945, books left by departing Japanese residents circulated through handcarts and junk markets near the old port. The Korean War added books brought or abandoned by refugees. The trade settled more firmly in Baedari, where Jiphyeonjeon began operating in 1953
By the 1960s and 1970s, more than forty secondhand bookstores were active in the district. Students and ordinary Incheon readers came for cheaper schoolbooks and hard-to-find titles. As new commercial centers and subway access redistributed shopping across the city, many owners moved toward schools or changed business
A different threat arrived in 2006 when Incheon proposed an industrial road through Baedari. Chosun Ilbo reported in 2007 that the proposed road was 50–70 metres wide and six to eight lanes; residents organized against a road they believed would sever both the physical neighborhood and its remaining local businesses
Kwak Hyun-sook’s one-person protest was one part of that campaign. The preservation movement later fed cultural spaces, neighborhood activity and formal recognition: Incheon designated the Baedari book-alley area as regional heritage in 2025
Before you go
The book street is compact enough to combine with the surrounding Baedari neighborhood, but the visit improves if the stores are treated as working shops rather than backdrops. Individual bookstores keep their own schedules, so the street itself and the possibility of entering every shop are two different things
- Hours
- The alley itself is publicly accessible at all times; individual bookstores keep separate opening days and hours
- Access
- Parking in the old neighborhood is limited; current tourism guidance recommends arriving by public transport
- Transit
- From Dongincheon Station Exit 1, Baedari Secondhand Bookstore Alley is about a nine-minute walk