RGH Housing Complex

Seoul Korea GIS aerial photos from 1978

I am Robert Boyle. I lived in Seoul where my father was stationed at Yongsan from February 1985 until the summer of 1987. When we arrived in 1985 we moved into the RGH housing complex south of the Han river. About six months later we moved to Blackhawk Village, one of the newly constructed housing complexes on Yongsan Garrison. I turned 9 right after we arrived in Korea. I was 11 when we left.

rgh_0.jpg shows David Ryan’s post to the Facebook group with his memory of the bus route to RGH.

I have often wondered where RGH was. Every now and then I would search for information about it but I was never successful in finding more than all of the wonderful pictures others had of their times in RGH. I found a Facebook post which included information posted by David Ryan(rgh_0.jpg) describing his memories of the route the school bus would take to drive to RGH.

It turns out that David Ryan gave a very accurate recollection. This week I finally found it. Although it was demolished soon after we moved out in 1985 I have located aerial orthophoto imagery of the complex on a Seoul Korea GIS platform. The platform is live and publicly available on the internet. I don’t use Facebook so I am unable to post to the group on there, including David Ryan. But I did find your website and wanted to at least share this information with you.

The attached pictures show where to find this imagery if others want to look more closely. I have also included a closeup of the RGH complex and an even closer view of the big building with the pool behind it where I swam many times.

The GIS website address is https://map.seoul.go.kr/global/

rgh_1.jpg shows the GIS website with a red circle where I clicked to access the GIS portal.

rgh_2.jpg shows the small airplane icon (red circle) on the right that I clicked to access the orthophoto imagery layers.

rgh_3.jpg shows that I chose the 1978 photos (RGH was replaced with high-rise buildings in the next set for 1989)rgh_3.jpg shows that I chose the 1978 photos (RGH was replaced with high-rise buildings in the next set for 1989)

rgh_4.jpg shows that I clicked the “X” to collapse the photo selection box

rgh_5.jpg shows the approximate location of RGH from a view large enough to see the Han river and surroundings. It also shows, in the bottom right, the Zoom controls.

rgh_6.jpg shows the RGH complex itself. Unfortunately where they spliced together orthophotos to produce the image layer there was a portion which didn’t have any aerial photo coverage. That is why the image is broken in the middle of RGH. It also happens to be right about where the duplex I lived in was, although I can see the right side of it.

rgh_7.jpg shows a zoomed in view of the big building with the pool behind it that many of us, I’m sure, swam in many times.

rgh_1989.jpg shows that, sadly, by 1989 RGH had been demolished and high-rise buildings had been built where the complex once was.

Unfortunately the GIS layers appear to all obscure the area of the
Yongsan base itself. But I am glad that the area of RGH is visible
(except for the broken portion of the imagery). I have seen individual photos from within RGH that others have posted. But this is the first time I have seen the complex itself in over 40 years. Quite a sight.


Robert Boyle

Fayetteville NC USA

Seoul Korea, Yongsan Garrison February 1985 - Summer 1987

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Notes: There are several other digital map platforms to consider when time traveling in Seoul. Enjoy!

https://map.naver.com/

Naver Map - Aerial Photo taken in March 2009

https://smap.seoul.go.kr/

https://museum.seoul.go.kr/archive/archiveNew/NR_archiveList.do?ctgryId=CTGRY785&type=C