"There is always something in Paris that pushes us forward."
A Humanist's Walk in Paris

This book contains writings by the author as he carried out his "grand" plan to walk over 5,000 streets in the center and outskirts of Paris, in a state of mind between unfamiliarity and familiarity.
The author embraces Paris, the capital of European modernity, with his whole body and sets out to discover traces of history, philosophy, literature, art, and the joys and sorrows of life hidden within its urban spaces.
Through this book, we now move beyond a superficial and sensory understanding of Paris and look at Paris as a city that has pursued universal human values ​​since the 18th century through the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, human rights and democracy, and the development of culture, art, and original humanities and social sciences, becoming Europe's "capital of modernity."
In other words, this book is a history of the European mind explored through urban space, and a report on how this history is involved in the formation of cities.
And the image of Paris provides an opportunity for all those who are forced to live in cities today to reconsider the shape of urban space for living.


Following the restoration of Cheonggyecheon, Gwanghwamun Square was built, and large-scale projects are underway to transform Seoul into the "Seoul of Asia," including the Seoul Metropolitan Government Building, Banpo Bridge Park, Dongdaemun Design Plaza, Seun Green Belt, Yongsan International Business District, and Magok-dong Waterfront.
This book, which explores the unique atmosphere and urban aesthetics of Paris while walking through the city, is a meaningful work in itself, but it can also serve as a mirror that sheds new light on the appearance of Seoul, which has been around for over 600 years.
This book, subtitled “The Humanities of City Walking,” goes beyond superficial urban design and makes us think about how a dignified urban atmosphere is created from within.
In this book, the author offers a wealth of food for thought on creating a cultural city with an atmosphere that breathes humanistic life into the city and transcends the everyday.

According to Walter Benjamin, who walked and loved Paris more than anyone else and studied it from a unique perspective, “No city in the world is so intimately connected to books as Paris.
Because for centuries the Seine has been covered with the ivy of learning.
Paris is a huge reading room of a library across the Seine River.
〔…〕 The most perfect form of walk, the happiest walk, is a walk toward a book and a walk into a book.” As Benjamin said, if Paris is one giant library, then walking around Paris is like going into it and taking out a book you like to read.
In Paris, there are countless books waiting for the reader's attention.
Paris is a library of the imagination and a vast 'republic of signs'.
Buildings, roads, parks, signs, cafes, plazas, alleyways, cathedrals, schools, newsstands, performance halls, theaters and cinemas, museums, playgrounds and gymnasiums, offices, statues, buses, subways, and people of all ages passing by on the street are all objects of reading awaiting interpretation.
So reading books in the library and walking around Paris become one.
--- pp.9~10, from “Opening the Book: What Kind of Book Is This?”

This book, the fruit of a long walk in Paris, can be called a Parisian walk in two senses.
First, this book is a collection of things I saw, heard, felt, and thought while walking around the city of Paris.
But the more I walked around Paris and became familiar with it, the more I wanted to know Paris better.
So I started reading books on Paris, covering history, literature, philosophy, and social sciences.
So, this book is a blend of facts and information I discovered while strolling through books about Paris, along with thoughts and feelings I had while walking through Paris myself.
So, this book can be said to be a sociologist's humanistic Parisian walk, created through the interaction of 'walking in Paris' and 'reading Paris.'
This book begins with my personal story of how I came to walk in Paris ("A Sociologist Walking in Paris") and my reflections on the true meaning of walking ("The Philosophy of Walking"), and then goes on to describe the historical process of Paris' formation, objectively describing the present state of Paris ("Reading Paris on a Map"), and finally my own understanding and interpretation of the reasons for Paris's aesthetic beauty ("The Urban Aesthetics of Paris").
In this book, I traced the genealogy of people who walked through Paris in a unique way ("Genealogy of Parisian Flâneurs") and also looked into how Parisians living today utilize the urban space of Paris in their daily lives ("Parisians' Paris").
--- pp.11~12, from “Opening the Book: What Kind of Book Is This?”

So I thought of the twenty arrondissements of Paris as twenty cities, and traveled to a different city every day.
Walking through Paris on my own two feet was also a way to find balance in my life by moving my life away from language and theory, abstraction and conception, toward emotion and the physical, concrete and real.
So I walked.
From Passy to Belleville, from Montparnasse to Buttes aux Cays, from École Militaire to Montmartre hill.
Sometimes with a clear mind, sometimes with a clouded mind, sometimes with curiosity, sometimes with fear, sometimes with a cheerful mind, sometimes with anger, sometimes with bewilderment, sometimes with a calm mind, sometimes with a light heart, I wandered all over Paris, crossing the boundaries of its twenty arrondissements at will.
Then, at some point, I started marking the places I walked that day with a green highlighter on a 1/12,000 map that showed all the streets in Paris.
As the days went by, the map turned greener.
After walking like that for over seven years, when I talk to Parisians, there are almost no streets or neighborhoods that I don't know, and I can recognize almost all the places in Paris that appear in movies or novels set in Paris, such as the streets, cafes, parks, and cemeteries.
To use a French expression, Paris has become more and more like a pocket.
--- pp.32~33, from “A Sociologist Walking in Paris: Why I Walk in Paris”

But strangely enough, as I walk through the narrow alleys and hillsides of Paris, places from my childhood that had vanished without me even realizing it gradually reveal themselves.
〔…〕 The reason why the space I didn’t live in reminds me of the space I did live in is because of the traces of that time.
If my childhood memories were built on the ruins of a colonial modern city, Paris would be the archetype of modernity that appears in such urban spaces.
So, the atmosphere of a modern city from the late 19th and early 20th centuries that permeates Paris seems to remind me of my childhood in Seoul.

So how do I dispel the colonial modernity that undeniably remains within me as an emotional sensibility? Doesn't denying colonial modernity mean denying my personal experience? Walking through Paris, am I perhaps becoming immersed in European modernity, the prototype of colonial modernity? 〔…〕 Walking through Paris often raises such complex questions.
Questions like these may be chronic, incurable symptoms of the intellectual's existence.
Still, I can't help but ask myself that question as I walk through Paris.
So perhaps I am still walking under the sky of Seoul while walking on the land of Paris.
--- pp.55~57, from "A Sociologist Walking in Paris: Why I Walk in Paris"

“One thing is certain, however.
It's a fact that I walked much more in Paris than in Lisbon, and there's a special phenomenon in Paris that I never feel tired while walking.
The visual delight of the Parisian architecture and its unique harmony makes you forget the weight of the bridge.
There is always something about Paris that pushes us forward.
It could be a street corner, a corner of a park, or a bridge crossing the Seine.
“I walk around Paris, drawn by an invisible force, and only when I return home or to my hotel at night do I feel the day’s hardships.” Like the poet from Lisbon, Portugal, I walk much more in Paris than in Seoul.
And you don't feel tired while walking.
The time when I feel tired is also after I get home and finish dinner.
But fatigue isn't all bad.
The fatigue that comes from walking with both legs is qualitatively different from the fatigue that builds up in front of a computer screen and makes your whole body feel heavy.
The fatigue I feel on the evening of the day I return from walking around aimlessly, intoxicated by the Parisian atmosphere, is a pleasant and happy fatigue.
Blessed is the one who walks, for he will sleep soundly and dreamlessly.
--- pp.84~85, from “The Philosophy of Walking: The True Meaning of Walking”

The perfect stroller is one who observes with rapt attention everything that appears and disappears before his eyes.
He is a man who feels as comfortable on the street as he does at home.
He is an anonymous individual buried in the crowd, yet at the same time the living center of the world, observing everyone.
A stroller observing Paris is like a prince who has disguised himself and escaped from the palace, enchanted by everything about the city.
The writers, poets, and artists who loved Paris were all such walkers.
They lost themselves in the flow of the crowd, walked through Paris, got ideas, got inspired, and returned to their studios to write poetry, novels, paintings, and compositions.
They simply walked through Paris without direction or purpose, captivated by the city's scenery and surrendering themselves to the flow of countless sights that came their way without resistance.
They were people who walked in Paris like fish swimming in the sea and birds flying in the sky.
As I write this while walking through Paris, I too am probably at the end of a long lineage of people who have walked through Paris in that way.
--- pp.138~139, from “Genealogy of Parisian Flâneurs: People Who Walked Paris in a Different Way”

After the May Movement of 1968, as utopian dreams of building new cities soared, urban issues became a central topic of critical social science.
There was a need to criticize the order of urban space reorganized under capitalism and to inject an atmosphere of freedom into the urban order created by France's authoritarian power system from Louis XIV to Napoleon III, through the era of Presidents de Gaulle and Pompidou.
So, rather than continuing tradition, the emphasis was on breaking with tradition and creating a new future.
Paris's grand squares and the symmetrical buildings that stood there, the straight avenues and the uniform buildings lining both sides of them, began to be criticized as architectural expressions of an absolutist system that emphasized order.
The Pompidou Center, built on the site of the demolished Beaubourg agricultural and fishery market, which was called 'Paris's stomach', became a landmark in modern architecture that rejected tradition.
New buildings that break free from the constraints of the past began to rise here and there in Paris.
〔…〕 However, this does not mean that the newly constructed buildings are completely disconnected from the order of the existing buildings in Paris.
In a time zone where moss has accumulated over time, free buildings have been built that respect the sedimentary traces and the continuation of memories and open up the future.
A new generation of architects pursued a new architecture that took into account its surroundings and context, as no single building could exist in isolation from other buildings.
Bold spatial experiments have taken place that not only adapt to existing styles but also give new meaning to existing spaces.
New buildings complement the existing ones, making Paris a historic city with a long tradition, yet at the same time a vibrant city open to the future.
--- pp.170~171, from “Reading Paris on the Map: What Kind of City is Paris?”

During my youth, from the 1960s to the 1970s, Paris in the 1950s was a fantasy travel destination where I longed to escape the gloomy and stifling reality of Korea and Seoul.
In reality, it was a time when I couldn't even go to Jeju Island, let alone Paris, but in my imagination, I could freely wander around Paris.
The following words of the late pop culture critic Lee Seong-wook accurately describe my situation during my youth: “The ‘Paris’ of today and the ‘Paris’ of that time are very different.
Nowadays, Paris is an ordinary place that we can visit almost anywhere, and is within the reach of our everyday senses, but back then, it was a fantasy and virtual space that could only be reached through popular culture.
Why is Paris a place of fantasy? It's simple.
This is because it was a place that an ‘ordinary person’ could never visit, and therefore could not enter the real world.
At that time, Paris did not just mean Paris itself.
Paris was a typical metaphor for somewhere that was impossible to reach, but that I really wanted to visit.
A yearning for Western culture, a strong curiosity about exoticism, but the reality of not being able to touch it.
“It was the Paris in popular songs that sealed that gap and gap.” --- p.188, from “The Urban Aesthetics of Paris: Where Does the Beauty of Paris Come From?”

But Paris isn't just about glamour.
There is a moderate amount of melancholy that comes from nowhere, neither too much nor too little.
Behind the glamour of Paris lies a sweet melancholy that seeps into the soul slowly and gently, like a gentle rain that soaks clothes without one's knowledge.
That kind of atmosphere cannot be felt in emerging cities in the ascendant phase, where people feel confident, satisfied with the present, and move forward with vigor.
Paris is a city that has reached its peak and is now in decline, having learned the futility of worldly glory and is looking back on its past with a long-term perspective, yet it still occupies a position that cannot be ignored.
In Paris, one feels the fading glory of the past, a faint nostalgia, unfulfilled dreams, the futility of shattered illusions, an inexplicable sense of lack, a sad sense of loss.
In a city where people rush forward with reckless force, it is difficult to create an atmosphere for introspection.
In a city like that, you feel like you have to move at breakneck speed in search of something new, something profitable.
Otherwise, I feel like I'll fall behind and become a loser.
But that's not the case in Paris.
The monumental buildings covered with moss from the past, the banks of the Seine River, and the park paths and alleyways are permeated with a melancholic atmosphere that reminds us of the finiteness and futility of human life.
Paris is a place where you can look into your inner self with a moderate amount of melancholy and a little bit of alienation.
〔…〕 Melancholy within splendor, splendor outside of melancholy.
The charm of Paris is created in a state of contradictory harmony, where two incompatible elements are inextricably intertwined.
In Paris, positivity and denial of the world, the joy of life and the meaninglessness of life, cheerfulness in the midst of splendor and melancholy in solitude coexist, sometimes in conflict and sometimes in harmony.
That is the essence of Parisian urban aesthetics.

--- pp.227~229, from “The Urban Aesthetics of Paris: Where Does the Beauty of Paris Come From?”