This picture also happens to have been taken in 신촌, and 신촌 is not only a major entertainment district but also a neighborhood that are surrounded by four universities (연세대학교, 홍익대학교, 이화여자대학교, 서강대학교). And if you go near a univeristy in Korea on a weekend, you can easily see something like this.

What do you think it is? Why would somebody do this? Where does it lead to?

These *marker* lines are usually used for guiding people from the 지하철역(subway station) or from 캠퍼스 안(inside the school campus) so that they can easily find the right 술집(bar) or 모임 장소(meeting point) for a reunion. 🙂

While it’s funny when you think about all the work that has to go into making this long long line (one line is usually 400m ~ 500m long or even longer),

it’s the welcoming atmosphere that these lines can give the visitors that makes college student keep doing this traditionally. For your information, it is of course illegal to put something like this on the public road, but it’s just understood and forgiven in areas near universities.

And it is actually quite fun making this although it takes hours and hours to finish one long line, and you always have to worry about the line getting cut somewhere in the middle, so you want to make sure that it’s securey fasten with duct tape.

And you also put in some welcoming messages on pieces of paper too. And when there seems to be more than one occasion going on in the neighborhood on the same day (which is almost always the case) you also want to put in some info about where this line goes to, although this arrow right below doesn’t have any info of that sort.

It says 이리 오슈 and 냉큼 오슈, which means “이리 오세요.” and “빨리 오세요” in standard Korean. 🙂