Gwangjang Market

Why it matters

Gwangjang Market was founded as an act of economic resistance. As Japanese investors came to dominate Namdaemun, then the city's main market, in the years around the 1905 treaty that made Korea a Japanese protectorate, Kim Jong-han and three other Korean backers put up land and 100,000 won to start a market of their own, the Jongno district's history records. Their first chosen site, between two bridges over the Cheonggyecheon stream, Gwanggyo and Janggyo, was lost to a great flood, so the market opened on its present site instead, taking its name from the two bridges: gwang and jang.

Traditional Korean markets opened every few days, on a cycle of three, five or seven. Gwangjang was the first to open every day, and it began by selling farm produce, fish and fuel. Today it covers some 42,000 square metres, with around five thousand shops, and on its upper floor a wholesale fabric market runs for more than a hundred metres, with tailors, hanbok makers and vintage clothing among the bolts of cloth.

The food alley made it famous. Its stalls, built around counters with benches where you eat what is cooked in front of you, are known above all for bindaetteok, the mung-bean pancake, and mayak gimbap, small seaweed rolls whose name means "addictive". A noodle stall from the market appeared in Netflix's Street Food series, and in the years since, the alley has become one of the most visited food destinations in Seoul.

It remains a working market for the people of Seoul as much as a sight for visitors. Around the food alley, shops sell fruit and vegetables, meat and fish, kitchenware, bedding, handicrafts and traditional medicinal goods, and its customers include cooks, tailors and families doing their shopping. That mix is what makes it worth more than a meal: you are eating in the middle of a market that is still doing what it was built to do.

The price question

That popularity has brought trouble. In 2023, complaints about small portions at high prices led Seoul's city government, the Jongno district and the market's own associations to agree new rules: menus would show quantities as well as prices, sample dishes would be displayed, price rises would be set by a committee, and repeat offenders would face suspension. In November 2025 a video by a food reviewer with 1.5 million subscribers showed a stall charging ₩10,000 for a dish priced at ₩8,000. It was watched more than 16 million times; the vendor was suspended for ten days, the market's shopkeepers sued its street vendors, and some traders said their sales had halved.

In May 2026 the city began a full inspection, sending Korean and foreign mystery shoppers to check for overcharging, pressure selling and unfair treatment of foreign visitors, checking price displays across the market, and bringing in a penalty-point system for street vendors from June. We tell you this not to put you off, but because it is the most useful thing a first-time visitor can know: the rules are on your side, and reading the displayed price is part of eating here.

What it's like

You come up from Jongno 5-ga Station, cross the pavement and are inside within a minute. The market is a covered grid of aisles under a high roof, lined with shops selling everything from bedding to dried fish, but it is the smell of frying that leads you to the food alley, where the aisles are filled end to end with stalls.

Each stall is a counter with the cooking in the middle and a bench along the outside. You sit, shoulder to shoulder with strangers, point at what you want, and it is cooked or cut in front of you. Stacks of pancakes wait at the front of the bindaetteok stalls, trays of rolls at the gimbap counters, and piles of noodle dough at the stalls that roll and cut kalguksu to order.

It is busy, noisy and quick. Nobody lingers long over a plate, and the benches turn over constantly, so you move from stall to stall, a dish at each, eating as you go.

Ordering is simple even without Korean. Most stalls show their dishes, prices and portions on a board or in front of the counter; point, hold up fingers for the number, and the food arrives. You pay at the stall where you ate, usually when you finish, and the vendor will tell you the total.

The alley has a rhythm through the day: busy at lunchtime, and at its fullest in the evening, when offices empty and the stalls are lit against the dark. Upstairs, away from the food, the fabric floor is another world, calm and dense with colour, where tailors measure and hanbok makers sew.

How to visit

Hours

Seoul's tourism office gives the market's hours as follows. Popular stalls can sell out and close before 11pm, and holiday hours can differ.

Getting there

Take Line 1 to Jongno 5-ga Station; Exit 8 is about 60 metres from the market. The market's southern edge runs along Cheonggyecheon stream, so you can also arrive on foot along the stream path from the city centre.

Gwangjang Market fills the block between Jongno, the main east–west street, to the north and Cheonggyecheon stream to the south, a little west of Dongdaemun. The food alley runs through the heart of the market, with the fabric and clothing floors above.

Queues

The best-known stalls, including those that have appeared on television, draw queues at busy times. Others a few metres away serve much the same food with a free seat; unless you have a particular stall in mind, follow the empty bench rather than the line.

Paying

Food is paid for at each stall as you go. We could not confirm how widely the street stalls take cards, so carry some cash as well; small notes make paying at the counters quicker.

Upstairs: fabric, hanbok and vintage

The market's upper floor is its wholesale textile market, where rows of shops sell cloth by the metre, and tailors and hanbok makers will make clothes to order. Seoul's tourism office also points visitors to the vintage clothing shops on the second floor. These parts of the market keep shop hours and close on Sundays.

Taking food away

The stacks of pancakes at the front of the bindaetteok stalls are there to be bought and taken away, wrapped. Pancakes and rolls travel well enough for a picnic by Cheonggyecheon stream, a few steps from the market.

Dietary needs

Bindaetteok is made from mung beans, but many stalls add pork, kimchi or bean sprouts, and fillings vary from stall to stall; yukhoe is raw beef, and many broths are made with fish or meat. If you are vegetarian or have an allergy, ask at the counter, and consider carrying a written note in Korean.

Access

The market is on one level at street height, but the aisles are narrow and crowded at peak times, and seating at the stalls is on benches or stools without backs. A quieter hour makes a visit easier with a wheelchair or pushchair.

Making the most of it

Graze, and share

The stalls are made for grazing. Order one dish at a time, share it, and move on; you will taste far more of the market than by settling at one counter for a full meal.

Choose your hour

Lunchtime brings the office crowd and evenings the fullest and liveliest alley. Published guides suggest the morning or mid-afternoon as the calmest times for a first visit; the evening is the time for the atmosphere.

A route through the market

Enter from Jongno 5-ga Station, Exit 8, and follow the smell of frying into the food alley. Walk its length once before you sit anywhere, to see what each stall does, then eat your way back: a pancake first, rolls second, noodles or something raw if you dare. Climb to the fabric floor to walk it off, and leave by the south side onto the Cheonggyecheon stream path.

Go beyond the food alley

Most visitors eat and leave. Spend twenty minutes upstairs on the fabric floor, among the bolts of silk and the tailors at work; it shows you the market that has traded here for more than a century, and it is quieter than anywhere downstairs.

Come when it rains

Koreans have a custom of eating savoury pancakes with makgeolli on rainy days, and a wet afternoon is a fine time to be under the market's roof, at a hot griddle, with a bowl of rice wine. The covered aisles keep you dry while the city outside empties.

Walk the stream

Cheonggyecheon, the restored stream that runs along the market's southern edge, is a sunken walking path through the city. Walk it west towards the city centre after eating, or east towards Dongdaemun.

Be a good guest

Seats are for eating, so give yours up when you have finished. Order at least one dish at each counter you sit at, and ask before photographing the vendors at close range.

Nearby

Cheonggyecheon stream runs along the south side of the market. A short walk north-west, Jongmyo Shrine and Changdeokgung and the Secret Garden make a quiet counterweight to the market. Changgyeonggung, the palace next to Changdeokgung, lies just to the north. West, Insadong is the place for tea and craft shops. East, the Dongdaemun area has Heunginjimun, the great east gate of the old city wall, the curving Dongdaemun Design Plaza and night-time fashion malls. For street food of a different kind, Myeongdong's food carts come out in the late afternoon. For the rest of the city, start with our Seoul guide.