Walking Through June 1987: A 4-Stop Democracy Trail from Yonsei University to Myeongdong Cathedral

Finding traces of 1987 in Seoul is trickier than you’d expect. The plazas where hundreds of thousands gathered that summer are now subway exits, flower beds, and coffee chains.

But a few markers remain. A bronze disc set into the pavement, barely thirty centimeters across. A low stone monument in front of a cathedral rectory. These are the kind of markers only people who already know stop to notice — if you don’t go looking, you’ll walk right past them.

Here’s a four-stop route you can walk in a single day. It starts in Sinchon, passes through City Hall, and ends in Myeongdong — roughly following the order the events unfolded.

What happened in June 1987?

It started that January, when Park Jong-cheol died inside the Namyeong-dong anti-communist interrogation room. Police ruled it a simple shock death, but in May the cover-up unraveled. On June 10, protest rallies erupted across the country. The demonstrations kept going for nearly twenty days — until June 29, when the government announced a constitutional amendment for direct presidential elections.

A twenty-two-year-old university student lost his life in those twenty days. Lee Han-yeol, a sophomore in business at Yonsei, was struck in the head by a tear gas canister fired directly at him by police in front of the university’s main gate on June 9. He died on July 5. The photograph of him slumped against a fellow student ran in the papers the next morning, and the protests swelled dramatically from that moment.

📅 Key dates along this route

1. Yonsei University Main Gate — the bronze plaque in the sidewalk

The starting point isn’t Sinchon Station — it’s the crosswalk right in front of Yonsei’s main gate. Embedded in the exact spot where Lee Han-yeol fell is a bronze plaque, about 30 centimeters across.

The placement is remarkably precise. The Lee Han-yeol Memorial Foundation cross-referenced photographs from that day with eyewitness accounts to confirm the location: 1.9 meters from the left pillar of the main gate, in the fourth row of sidewalk blocks. The plaque was installed on June 9, 2016 — the 29th anniversary.

People walk over it every day. There’s no sign, no placard, nothing to tell you it’s there. You won’t see it unless you lower your gaze and look.

📍 Open in Naver Map

2. Lee Han-yeol Memorial Museum — the place with the single shoe

About ten minutes on foot from the main gate toward Sinchon, you’ll find a modest four-story building. The address is 26 Sinchon-ro 12na-gil, Mapo-gu — tucked into a side street, so look for the sign.

Most of the collection here is small in scale. A single sneaker he was wearing when he was struck. The clothes he had on. A diary and letters from a twenty-two-year-old. The sneaker’s material has deteriorated over the decades and gone through multiple rounds of conservation treatment.

🕙 Lee Han-yeol Memorial Museum — visitor info

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This is the only point on the route with a hard time constraint. The museum closes at 5 p.m. on weekdays, so plan to be in Sinchon by morning or early afternoon.

3. Seoul Anglican Cathedral — where the June Uprising began

From Sinchon, hop on Line 2 and get off at City Hall Station — the cathedral is right there. Just west of Seoul City Hall, tucked beside the stone wall of Deoksugung Palace, stands a Romanesque church built of red brick and granite.

On June 10, 1987, a national rally convened here to denounce the cover-up of Park Jong-cheol’s death by torture and to demand an end to the authoritarian constitution. The cathedral bells rang out as the signal — and on that cue, simultaneous protests kicked off in 22 cities across the country.

When the cathedral was quickly cordoned off by police, students turned toward Myeongdong. That’s why the next stop on this route is Myeongdong Cathedral.

📍 Open in Naver Map

4. Myeongdong Cathedral — the six-day sit-in

From City Hall to Myeongdong Cathedral is about a 15-minute walk. Head toward Euljiro 1-ga, cut through the Myeongdong shopping district, and the Gothic spires come into view up on the hill.

On the evening of June 10, protesters fleeing the police poured onto this hill. The sit-in lasted until June 15, with nearby shopkeepers and ordinary citizens passing food and water through the lines. Those six days are remembered as the turning point of the June Uprising.

There’s a well-known story about Cardinal Kim Sou-hwan’s response when the police threatened to enter the cathedral grounds. His reply, in essence: if they storm the cathedral, the first person they’d meet would be him.

📍 Open in Naver Map

The space beneath Myeongdong Cathedral today is a modern complex of underground shops and cafés. Only the stairs climbing the hill remain as they were.

How to plan your route

🚶 Standard half-day itinerary

Truth be told, this route really begins in Namyeong-dong. What happened there in January 1987 set off every scene that followed in June — and that building now stands as the Democracy and Human Rights Memorial Hall. If you’ve got an extra day, start with Namyeong-dong in the morning, then walk this route in the afternoon. That’s the order the story was written.