Incheon Chinatown begins with the opening of the port. Incheon opened in 1883, a Qing concession was designated the next year, and people from Shandong settled on this hill. Traders and dock workers came first; restaurants and bakeries followed. Korea had several Chinese communities, but this is nearly the only one where the original form survives. The red paifang gate at the entrance was built much later, yet the curving alleys up the slope and the arrangement of brick buildings are inherited directly from the concession era.
What made the neighbourhood famous is jajangmyeon. The account that has settled here is that dock labourers during the port-opening years wanted something cheap and quick, and a Chinese fried-bean-sauce noodle was gradually sweetened to Korean taste until it became the dish known today. That is why the street has a jajangmyeon museum. Pinning the origin on one specific shop is contested for lack of sources, so it is more accurate to say the neighbourhood carries the story rather than settles it.
The food is not only noodles. Gonggalppang, hollow bread baked in a clay oven with a hard shell and moist interior; mooncakes, crisp outside with sweet filling; sweet-and-sour pork made with corn starch for an unusually chewy coating — each alley offers its own version. Popular places have long queues at weekend lunch, and waiting an hour for one bowl of jajangmyeon is common. If queues bother you, go late on a weekday afternoon or look for lesser-known shops higher up the hill.
It would be a waste to see only Chinatown. Over the hill runs the old open-port street lined with bank buildings from the Japanese concession period, and along the way there is a stretch where Korean, Chinese and Japanese architecture changes within a single alley. At one staircase the railings differ on either side — that was the concession boundary. Climb to Jayu Park for a view over Incheon harbour, and on the way down you can take in the Open Port Museum and the Modern Architecture Exhibition Hall. Half a day covers the whole loop.