Visiting Korea

Neighborhoods to visit

Here are some ideas for visiting Seoul. As always, your interests may be very different, so take these suggestions with a grain of salt.

• For hikers, a climb in Inwangsan Mountain Park offers splendid views of downtown. No need to go all the way up. Start in here and here People looking for more challenging spots can ask for more info.
• The Palace: Gyeongbokgung Palace is pretty much standard...and certainly worth visiting. Gyeongbokgung is best thought of as the majectic, political center, as reflected in its design. Nearby Changgyonggung Palace is a more intimate space for living. As I write this, I am realizing that I prefer it.
• Between these two palaces is Bukchon, a swanky neighborhood with many traditional and modernized traditional housing.
• Just south of Bukchon is Insadong-gil. This primarily pedestrian street is tourism central, boasting tea shops, restaurants, souvenir shops, little galleries, and other commercial endeavors. In this neighborhood, my favorite restaurant is Insadong Sujebi, though it doesn't taste quite as good as I imagine it used to! You must order the sujebi.
• Some people might get a kick out of nearby Nakwon Arcade, which houses four floors of musical instrument shops above a coarse basement food market.
• A similar commercial building packed with myriads of small shops is Sewoon Arcade. This arcade is Korea's first modernist building and is about 1km long. Much of it is stuffed with tiny electrical and electronic shops. I recently found one floor dedicated to all the parts you need to build and repair arcade games.
• At the neighborhood scale, there is a cluster of small, printing-related shops in Chungmuro. This is a classic "industrial district" with each shop typically specializing in one part of the printing process.
• The National Museum of Korea is a lovely and manageably sized museum of Korean art and artifacts.
• International flavor can be found in HBC (here and here. Nearby Itaewon is the similarly popular with international crowds.
• Korea's latest effort to create its own gentrified Brooklyn can be found in Seongsu-dong.
• Personally, I find little reason to visit the area south of the river (Gangnam), but for a taste of Gangnam Style and the generally wealthier part of town, a visit to Gangnam Station isn't the worst choice.
• One spot that I wanted to hate but actually quite like is DDP. Zaha Hadid pulled off something genuinely engaging. Nearby buildings host a lot of small fashion shops, both retail and wholesale.
• Just north of DDP is Dongdaemun Market, which can be interesting. However, there are two other ways to go from here.
• The first is the increasingly popular Gwangjang Market and (for me) the more interesting retail agglomerations west of the market down to Jongno-3-ga.
• The other direction is to walk along the city wall from here to the top of Naksan Park and then drop down into the theatrical (and commercial) district of Hyewa.
• And of course, I have been forgetting my old stomping grounds of Hongdae, which was centered on the art university but has now spread like cancer to Sangsu on one side and Seoul's "Highline", Gyeongui Line Forest Park, on the other.
• My unremarkable old digs were the metal shed on top of this building.
• Two other potentially interesting markets are: Cheongnyangni Market across the street, which is a huge traditional market that still has come country feel.