After years of renovations, the old Seoul City Hall building (Cultural Heritage No. 52) repened as Seoul Metropolitan Library (SML) on October 26, 2012. I first heard of this great news by our Tour to Korea director - Emilly. This topic came up when we went to Paju and visited Book City, which needs a separate post.The area of SML is 9,500 square meters, it is a seven story structure that houses about 200,000 books including foreign language books, audiovisual materials, digital collections, and Braille books.
Seoul City Hall (SCH) building opened in 1926 under Japanese colonial rule as the headquarters of the governor-general of Korea. After liberation, it became the headquarters of the municipal government and Seoul Mayor's Office.
Originally, the government decided to demolish this building and I was seriously concerned like many others in Korea (read my post HERE) but public support for the preservation lead to change in the plans - a consensus was reached the front part of the building facing Seoul Plaza and demolish the back part of it that used to house Seoul Global Center and many other offices of the SMG.
The first important event that was held at the Seoul Metropolitan office was 2012 Seoul Book Festival. The festival, now on its fifth year, will offer chances for visitors to meet with authors, discussions, live musical performances and puppet shows, and a storybook reading by Mayor Park on the final day of the festival. After renovation the old building has now a book café, a rooftop garden plus a bridge (same as at Yonsei-Songpo) to connect the old building with te old one.
This building is really worth a visit, and its wave shaped roof represents the Korean Wave (it's my view) which is an interesting phenomenon and personally, after riding it via Buzz Korea's "Touch Korea Tour".
For more information visit the homepage of Seoul Metropolitan Library (Korean, English) and for Seoul Book Festival, click here (Korean only).
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