Some Seoul Shopping Places

I spent 4 days in Seoul over my vacation period. One of the things that I wanted to see was more of the shopping culture; I'm not a big shopper myself, but I enjoy watching people go about it, both the customers and the salespeople.

Seoul offers an interesting variety of shopping venues. There are, of course, your standard department stores, but there are also a number of underground shopping centers and outdoor markets.

The underground market in Hoehyeon-dong (next to Myeong-dong) was nearly deserted at about 10 am; the shopkeepers were just beginning to open up. I found a variety of clothing, camera, coin/bill collector, hiking apparel, and other shops, all of them quite small. There is also a basement entrance to Shinsegae dept. store, along with a subway entrance.

Also, two pics of the edge of Namdaemun market, which is next to Hoehyeon-dong and close to Namsan park. This market offers clothing, touristy goods, bags, shoes, etc., and has a series of camera shops along one side. When I went there on a weekday morning it was crowded, sometimes uncomfortably so.

The outdoor market was definitely more interesting than the underground one, though both were quite different from the department store shopping that was going on not far away. It's natural to have shops selling similar items grouped together, as happens so often in Korea, yet it seems a bit strange to have high-end stores located so close to low-end markets. I spent hours wandering around all of the shopping areas, and had some interesting "conversations" with store owners; many speak a bit of English (as well as Chinese and Japanese) as tourists are rather common.