Suwon

The area was a country district called Suwon long before the present city existed, with its administrative centre several kilometres to the south. The city was created by a single decision. King Jeongjo, who came to the throne in 1776, had watched his father, Crown Prince Sado, die after being shut in a rice chest on his own grandfather's orders in 1762. In 1789 Jeongjo moved his father's tomb to an auspicious site near present-day Hwaseong city, relocated the villagers living there to the foot of Paldalsan, and began building them a new walled town.

Hwaseong Fortress was built between 1794 and 1796, unusually quickly for a project of its size, using cranes and pulleys devised by the scholar Jeong Yak-yong and paid labour rather than corvée. Its wall of brick and stone, nearly six kilometres long, combined Korean practice with Chinese and European military ideas, and the whole undertaking was recorded in an illustrated manual, the Hwaseong Seongyeokuigwe, down to the cost of each stone. Jeongjo intended to move the capital here; he died in 1800 and the plan lapsed.

The city grew as a provincial centre and railway town, and the fortress suffered badly: neglect under colonial rule, then heavy damage during the Korean War, when the gates and much of the wall were shelled. Restoration began in the 1970s and was guided by the 18th-century record, which is why UNESCO accepted the rebuilt fortress as a World Heritage Site in 1997. From the 1970s Suwon became an industrial city as Samsung Electronics built its main plant and later its headquarters here, and the population passed a million.

Suwon presents itself as a fortress city, and the wall is the frame for public life: open-air martial arts displays in the Haenggung courtyard, archery on the ramparts and, each autumn, the Hwaseong Cultural Festival with its re-enactment of Jeongjo's royal procession from Seoul. Jeongjo himself is a local hero, remembered as a reforming king whose new city was meant to be a model of good government.

Football is the other civic passion. The Suwon Samsung Bluewings have one of the loudest and most organised supporter cultures in Korea, and their Super Match derby with FC Seoul is among the country's biggest fixtures, though the club has played in the second-tier K League 2 since being relegated in 2023. Samsung's presence shapes the calendar in a quieter way: the company's campus dominates the east of the city, and Suwon's identity as a place of engineers and factories sits beside its identity as a heritage town.

The old town inside the walls has been deliberately kept low-rise, and over the last fifteen years the lanes of Haenggung-dong have filled with small cafés, craft workshops, guesthouses and painted walls, drawing weekend visitors from Seoul and turning what was a declining quarter into the city's cultural centre. Manners are those of the capital area — two hands for giving and pouring, shoes off indoors, age governing forms of address — with a provincial-capital pride in doing things properly.

About 1.2 million people live in Suwon, making it the largest city in Gyeonggi province and the seat of the provincial government. The population is younger than the national average, with several universities in the city and a steady arrival of families priced out of Seoul. Most people live in apartment towers, particularly in Yeongtong and Gwanggyo, and the older districts inside and around the walls keep lower houses and narrow streets.

Electronics dominate the economy. Samsung Electronics has its headquarters and a large research and manufacturing campus in the city, and a long chain of suppliers, component makers and contractors depends on it, alongside the provincial administration, hospitals and universities. A great many residents commute to Seoul on Line 1 or the express buses, and the morning flow in both directions is heavy.

Daily rhythms follow that: early trains, long working days, evening meals in the barbecue streets near the station, and weekend walks on the wall. The recurring issues are the same as elsewhere in the capital area — housing costs, traffic and the concentration of opportunity in Seoul — with a local argument about how much new building to allow near the fortress, where height limits protect the views that the World Heritage listing depends on.

Suwon's name is attached to one dish above all: Suwon galbi, beef short ribs cut broad and long, scored, marinated lightly in a salt-based or soy seasoning and grilled over charcoal. The style is associated with the cattle market that once served the walled city, and the ribs are cut larger here than the usual galbi, served with rice, soup and a table of side dishes. Restaurants specialising in it cluster near the station and in the eastern districts.

The other local speciality is fried chicken, in the plain style that predates the sweet and spicy sauces now sold everywhere. A street of shops near the old market fries whole birds to order, and they are eaten with salt, pickled radish and beer. The traditional markets running north from Paldalmun supply the rest of the everyday food: kalguksu, hand-cut wheat noodles in broth; sundae, blood sausage steamed with offal and eaten with salt; tteokbokki and fried snacks; and stalls of side dishes, dried fish and ground chilli.

Otherwise the city eats what the capital area eats, with the same cold naengmyeon noodles in summer, stews bubbling in earthenware pots, and pork belly grilled at the table. Haenggung-dong's converted houses have brought coffee roasters, bakeries and small wine and makgeolli bars to the old quarter, and the student areas near the universities keep prices low.