Gwangjang Market and Sewoon
Mung-bean pancakes, a 1960s megastructure and beer alley
≈1.5 km · ≈20 min walking · Easy · Jongno-gu · Start: Jongno 5-ga station · End: Euljiro 3-ga station
Eat your way through Seoul's oldest market, walk the elevated decks of Kim Swoo-geun's Sewoon Sangga over the electronics workshops, and end with a cold beer and dried fish in Euljiro's Nogari Alley.
Stops
- Gwangjang Market (광장시장)
One of Korea's oldest permanent markets (1905), with a central food alley of bindaetteok (mung-bean pancakes), mayak gimbap and yukhoe. Upstairs are fabric and vintage clothing stalls. - Sewoon Sangga (세운상가)
Korea's first mixed-use megastructure (1968) by Kim Swoo-geun: a 1 km chain of buildings with raised pedestrian decks. Restored since 2017, the decks again link Jongno to Toegye-ro, over workshops that still make and fix electronics. - Euljiro Nogari Alley (을지로 노가리골목)
A lane of beer halls where plastic tables spill into the street every evening, serving draft beer and grilled dried pollack (nogari).
Best time: Late afternoon on a weekday, so you finish in Nogari Alley when the tables go out.
Tips
- Gwangjang's food alley is busiest from noon to 2 pm and on weekend evenings; weekday afternoons are easier.
- Sewoon's roof garden, reached by lift, looks over Jongmyo Shrine to Bukhansan.
Access
The market and Sewoon Sangga's decks are level or have lifts, but aisles are narrow and very crowded in the evening.