Itaewon Complex

There was snow which was a problem for moving around unseen. These tracks were all not mine.

The building with the fancy penthouse, and the African embassy on the right.

I had a look inside this building in plain daylight.

Found a dead bird.

Mexican barbwire.

Last time I had found this, but my photo of it was out of focus.

This I believe I already photographed.

So here's the bottom boundary of the whole site. This also is the one structure I haven't entered yet.

Behind me is more embassy property.

Fortunately, it turned out that we found another way into the complex from downhill.

We found one house had a strange basement space, one that could very easily be hidden. Coetzer went down to have a look, at great difficulty, and found it was just a smallish area beneath the house.

Done with this building.

I showed him the basement of one of the three identical buildings, and he waddled thrugh shallow water for a closer look at what was around the corner.

Not much back there.

He then pointed out that what I thought was a shallow closet was a portal into an entire basement level. We squeezed in and wandered around.

Some stuff including a barbecue was stored down here.

And a TV.

And an oven.

Plus old computer equipment.

This looks older.

We opened one door into this back room, with a decayed old grill on teh floor. But most notably, we did not notice the bricks to the right, which we will learn more about later.

Upstairs, we found what looked like a fully equipped surveillance system, but it was off.

I wanted to trace the wires.

A nicely demented image.

A look down from this building onto the two others downhill that were basically identical. What would their basements be like?

How to navigate this fresh snow?

One of the wires went to this camera. It didn't seem to be pointed at anything in particular, but also was vaguely in the direction of one of the nearby embassies. Is that allowed?

The abandoned scooter still there.

Some abandoned mail which might help us later.

Some computer equipment that seems like it's for AV stuff, and not new.

More mail.

All these boxes were disappointingly empty.

Next we went into another basement. This one wasn't flooded, but had a dangerously decayed shelf system in the way of the entrance, which you can see later. This by the way is a box full of financial statements.

Lots of them.

It's beyond my ability to identify stuff like this.

Old boilers.

We found an old book full of interesting retro designs.

Imagine carrying one of those around in your pocket.

So here's a look back at the way we came in. Now I can see the box on top dangerously deteriorated.

So we looked around more before risking escaping. It appears we found a ton of chinaware.

Lots of bowls.

And plant pots.

And teacups.

This is now in a completely different building, where we discovered it had apparently been a daycare.

Pickup schedule.

Coetzer squeezes in another tight passage.

So then we got into the basement of the third building, which was a lot toughter due to debris accumulated at the door. And when I got inside, it was full of cobwebs. But we persisted, and found mostly empty rooms, less interesting than the other two buildings. Then I encoutnered this. A bricked-off staircase.

I went back to the passage underneath the actual staircase, ducked under, and was able to see it from the other side. What in the hell?

Anyway, the sun was setting.

I photographed the signs out front that described what was going on here.

This one does say it's for demolition work on 13 lots.

This one's a warning that it will kick up dust, from 20250110 to 20250430.

Looks like they can work from 8am to 5pm.