In April 2022, a photograph of a long hibar string on piles circled the social network, a signature under which claimed that we have a terrain near Moscow. We checked whether this is really so.

I gained the most popularity fast V Facebook, made by the Bulgarian user Jovcho Kovatsaliev on April 19 and entitled "200 km east of Moscow." In the photo we see a series of old wooden houses on stilts, as if ready to collapse. Below, on the edge of an icy pond, black linen is dried on the ropes - another sign of poverty. About 30,000 users of the social network shared this publication on April 29.

The description of the photograph embarrassed some readers, because wooden houses on stilts are more likely to Asia, although in Europe, “huts on chicken legs” sometimes Meet. However, the buildings that are in the frame may well be extensions with solid foundations behind. Therefore, nothing can be excluded in advance.

It is easy to find that another wave of popularity of this photo in the Russian -language segment of the network was held in the summer of 2019. Disticed albeit not like that, but also a solid circulation of publications with her in Facebook, Twitter and in a number of others resources (including Demotivators) Already adorned another signature: "The village of Leninskoye, Amur Region, October 2018." The problem is that within the boundaries of this Selo There are no more or less noticeable reservoirs.

The first appearance of the picture on the Web was dated October 10, 2005, when it is in the Internet community of photographers-travelers Trekearth Placed the famous Turkish photographer Izet Keribar. The photo is called “slums on the Hangan River” and has the following description: “It is difficult to imagine what Seoul looked like in the post -war years. As I already pointed out in another message, in 1956-1957 I served in Korea an officer of the Turkish brigade. There reigned devastation and terrible poverty. These houses on the banks of the Hangan River reflect the immensity of poverty and the suffering of people. In the yard stood December 1956, a very cold month, the temperature dropped to –25 ° C. Therefore, there is nothing surprising in the fact that under one of the houses the water in the sewer froze. The Hangan River also froze, pay attention to the snow and dry underwear. ”

Keribar is not entirely right: in the photo we are not a Hangan (the largest river of South Korea), but a stream of Chongochon, which flows into one of its tributaries. The modest water artery, crossing the center of Seoul from west to east, after the end of the Korean War (1950–1953) has grown with shacks built by immigrants from impoverished provincial cities.

Soon, due to the impurity of Chonggechon, drained into a stream, turned into a focus of unsanitary conditions, and only in the next decade did the city authorities decided to demolish the shacks and relocate their inhabitants. The stream was hidden in a concrete pipe, and above it erected Double -tier highway.

By the 2000s, when environmental damage caused by the city center with a high-speed highway, the authorities, became obvious Reviewed their decision And they released Chongochon to the will. Today it is one of the main attractions of Seoul-a 11-kilometer recreation area with parks and cozy bridges.

In this picturesque embankment, it is difficult to find out the slums of the old Seoul, but it was here, and not in the Amur region, and even more so in the vicinity of Moscow, a photograph popular in social networks was taken many decades ago.