“No city changes as quickly . . . None has so short a memory or is so heartless to itself; it has an inhuman quality.” Fifty years ago that was New York (in the eyes of journalist John Gunther), which now seems cautious and intimate compared to a city like Seoul. Decades of relentless expansion, following the depredations of war and occupation, have made Seoul a landscape where the past doesn’t seem to count for much and hardly more does space for reflection; everywhere you go in this restless megalopolis, you see a city in the midst of being built. So it’s probably appropriate that Seoul’s