“I thought we were useless”: K-skateboarding and socio-material pollution in Nanjido, Seoul

Abstract

This article discusses the enmeshment of skateboarding and pollution from an ethnographic perspective. It advances recent scholarship on “polluted leisure” by zooming in on Nanjido, Seoul. A former landfill and brownfield, the island was transformed into an ecological park in the lead-up to the 2002 FIFA World Cup. Performing athletic tricks on top of decades of chemical and radiating waste, skateboarders must attend to and live alongside the hidden anthropogenic materialities and invisible social histories of the eco-park. This ethnography provides evidence of the tactics that skateboarders use to navigate and mitigate the socio-material repercussions of pollution—from denial to fact-finding. The skatepark also marks a shift in the social discourse on skateboarding in South Korea. Historically, the practice is considered an ing-yeo-jit: a “useless” and wasteful youth activity—a social pollutant. Encapsulated in gentrification strategies masked as environmentalism, skateboarding is presented as a “useful” and “healthy” practice used to push the park's green and salubrious image.