Namdaemun Market and More

I didn’t leave the Seoul Botanic Garden this morning until close to noon. It’s a bit out from the core of the city, so it would take me from half an hour to 45 minutes to get anywhere else interesting from there. Lunch became a factor in my choice of where to go. I chose Namdaemun Market because my guidebook recommended visiting it and said that it has lots of food stalls with tasty foods.

After that, I visited a nearby old city gate and then took a walk to a neighbourhood recommended by the same guidebook. In amongst that, I had a couple of close encounters with Korean politics.

That sounds like something you’re going to want to read about, doesn’t it?

What? Doesn’t it? You can leave now and demand a refund if you wish. But act quickly. The punctilious hardasses in accounting refuse to provide refunds more than 12 hours after receiving your payment. Refunds are available only by filling in the relevant online form.

I should warn you that the greedy bastards in management insist that the webmasters make the form as difficult to find as possible. And sometimes they delete it. So you might spend hours looking for the form, and still possibly not find it. Hence, you might as well forfeit all hope of a refund and just read this post. Sorry about that.

Namdaemun Market

My guidebook describes Namdaemun Market as having everything you could want. If today was typical and if you’re there midday on a Saturday, then if what you want is to plod along through crowds, Namdaemun Market is the place to be. Today is Saturday. I arrived there a little before 1:00 in the afternoon.

By that point, I was hungry for lunch. Other people hunger for, say, adventure. I hunger for lunch.

For some reason, I was craving Korean dumplings. I found a stall that sold them, among other delicacies. The dumplings were relatively large. The vendor offered the choice of either five or ten. I bought five, ate them standing up at a counter at the stall. They were delicious and sated my hunger. But I was still not hungering for adventure. I rarely, if ever, am.

I then wandered around Namdaemun Market some more. The market has one wide aisle, almost a road, and some that are barely wide enough for two people side-by-side.

I doubt that it has everything you could want, but its merchandise selection is very broad. Vendors offer hats, shirts, scarves, jackets, coats, herbs, fruits, vegetables, fish (I didn’t see other meats, but I might have just missed them), jewelry, linen, quilts, and bags. And it offers too much more to mention here, mainly because I forget what else was sold there. There are also small restaurants and other food stalls like the one I ate at.

It’s one of those old markets (my guidebook claims it’s almost as old as Seoul) that’s full of character. I’m not a shopper (I’ve mentioned a few times in these pages how much I hate shopping), but I think it’s worth a visit just for the character.

Sungnyemun

The oldest and largest remaining gate of what was the now only fragmentarily existing Seoul wall (Seoul was a walled city at one time), is called Sungnyemun. It is large, imposing, and impressive. But it just stands there. Its purpose disappeared when the wall did. But it is nice to look at.

The timing didn’t work out for me, but I read that there are ceremonial gate openings at 10:00 a.m. and ceremonial closings at 3:30 p.m. But don’t worry if you arrive at the gate between 3:30 p.m. and 10:00 a.m. Because there’s not much wall attached to either side of Sungnyemun, you can easily walk around rather than through it. I walked through.

It reminded me of those old slapstick comedies where there was a door in a frame unattached to any walls, but the comedian would, with some difficulty, open and walk through the door rather than walking around it. (Yes, yes, I know. Comedy was so much more sophisticated back then than now, wasn’t it?)

Seochon Neighbourhood

My guidebook also recommended the Seochon neighbourhood for an interesting stroll. It was more than half an hour’s walk from Namdaemun Market (I took a lot longer for a reason insinuated in the aside below), but today was a nice day for a walk. So I walked.

The guidebook recommended starting at the neighbourhood’s Tongin Market. I took that advice.

Tongin Market is mostly a single-aisle arcade with a peaked glass roof that runs for the equivalent of two or three blocks. It’s lined with fine-grained shops that mostly sell food, both fresh food to prepare at home, and prepared food to eat there. There are only a few stalls selling general merchandise.

Tongin Market is much, much smaller than Namdaemun Market, a little cleaner, and, at least when I was there, considerably less crowded. But it still oozed personality.

My guidebook also informed me that Seochon has many hanoks and is not as crowded as Bukchon, where I’d been the other day. I saw a few hanok buildings, but not a lot. One I saw was Hong Geonik’s House. It’s the last hanok in Seoul with a two-post gate, an ice storage, and a well. It’s currently used for community activities.

The guidebook was right about Seochon being less crowded than Bukchon. And I strolled along a street in the neighbourhood that didn’t have any hanocks that I saw, but was a pleasant street lined with cafes.

Strolling around the neighbourhood, I also came upon a street with a sign overhead that told me, in English, it was Seochon’s eating street. It was another pleasant street, this one with lanterns strung overhead down the centre of the street. Restaurants lined both sides.

I walked the length of that street—two or three blocks—and then went back to my hotel.

Pictures of Hong Geonik’s House:

Programming Note

This is my last full day in Seoul. I leave tomorrow morning for my next destination in Korea. I won’t post a Seoul summary here because I’ll be back for one night before catching my flight home. I’ll have half a day in Seoul before that night, plus my flight doesn’t leave until about 7:00 in the evening. I’ll be staying in a different hotel then, one close to the Seoul train station, from which I can catch an express train to the Incheon Airport. So I’ll have a fair bit of time in Seoul, and probably more to say about Seoul that day too.

Aside

Korean Politics

So this happened.

Sungnyemun is kitty-corner to Namdaemun Market. As I walked between the two, there were small crowds carrying banners and flags on two of the corners of the kitty, so to speak. People were shouting and chanting through loudspeakers.

The banners were all in Korean. It looked like it might be a political rally of some sort. But it was the flags that caught my attention. Among them, there were both Korean and U.S. flags. What the what?

I knew absolutely nothing about Korean politics, but on the hunch that it was a political rally of some sort, right there, I did a web search on my phone for “Korea election 2026 United States.”

The search returned a news item that told me that there is indeed an election in about a month and a half. The article said that the leader of the main opposition party, People Power Party, Jang Dong-hyuk, was heading to the United States today, Saturday, rather than on his planned departure on Monday, so he would have time for more meetings with people in the US.

I then started walking toward Seochon. As I did, I heard the chants of the people behind me not getting any fainter. They were on the move, in the same direction I was going.

I doubled back a bit and saw that the crowd had grown. And there was some helpful information—helpful, that is, in terms of finding out what was going on. One guy was carrying a flag with only printing on it. The printing was in English. It said, “Yoon Again.” And, in the top right corner, it said, “Stop the steal.” I kid you not.

I also saw some people wearing red jackets with “Yoon Again” emblazoned on the back.

My ears prompted with this information, I started recognizing that all of the changing and speechifying, which was otherwise all in Korean, was peppered with “Yoon Again.” Because I wasn’t expecting to hear English, I didn’t until I had that prompt.

But what does Yoon have to do with Jang Dong-hyuk? If I had a better memory, I probably would have known at the time, but I didn’t until I did a little more web searching back at my hotel before writing this up. I’ll get to that shortly.

At one point, the police stopped the crowd from marching farther along the street.

As I continued my walk, the street I was on passed by the city hall. There, the other side of the street from the city hall was closed off and filled with chairs. The chairs were filled with people.

The people had fewer flags and banners, but many of them were shading themselves with identical umbrellas. The umbrellas were emblazoned with a Korean flag on one half and an American flag on the other. Those crowds in seats went on for blocks, with huge television screens suspended over the street and huge speaker towers broadcasting a political rally. The rally was also punctuated with the occasional “Yoon Again” cry.

After I left Seochon and got close to the metro station where I caught the subway toward my hotel, I saw more of the same ilk of political ralliers, or maybe the same ralliers, marching, chanting, and carrying their flags and umbrellas. Harumph.

Back at my hotel, adding Yoon to my search, I learned from a Politico article that the Yoon in question is Yoon Suk Yeol. He had been president of Korea at one time. However, he’s not the leader of the People Power Party or its candidate for president in the upcoming election, mainly because, after being charged, tried, and convicted, he’s currently sentenced to life in prison for unjustifiably declaring martial law as president and for insurrection.

(Imagine that. A country that’s willing to hold its president accountable for severe misdeeds. Sounds like the way it should be to me.)

Despite the conviction, or maybe because of it, the slogan of the party has become “Yoon Again!”

After reading that, I remembered vividly having read at the time about the declaration of martial law and the subsequent charge, but I had absolutely no recollection of the former president’s name.

The Politico article was mainly about a rally that happened in mid-February (it’s now mid-March). At that rally, there was a guy proudly wearing a Trump mask and people carrying signs saying “Make Korea Great Again” and “Stop the Steal.” Apparently, the People Power Party aligns closely with the American MAGA movement.

Having learned that, not only do I sincerely hope they remain in opposition, but I also hope they’re decimated in the election.

However, the party aligning with the MAGA movement and the candidate going on an extended visit to the U.S. to try to garner endorsements makes perfect sense. It’s probably very wise because, as everyone clearly knows, any party, opposition or incumbent, of any country anywhere in the world that can secure a strong endorsement from the Trumpists in the US, will be absolutely assured of a win in their election.

Just ask Viktor Orbán. Oh, wait. Never mind.

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Sub-Aside: The election in Hungary occurred the day after I arrived in Seoul. When I read about the result, I decided to add Hungary to my consideration set for my next trip. Seriously. That was less than a week ago, so I still have to research things like hotels, flights, and what sights to see before I make that decision. And I’m travelling now, not researching. But I will include that as a strong possibility.