Insadong is an art and shopping district in Seoul. On a weekend it’s overrun with people looking for everything from performing arts masks, to paintings to traditional clothing.
Galleries also abound in Insadong. You can spend an entire afternoon whittling away the hours searching for that special something to put on your wall or shelf.
And if you’re feeling a wee bit peckish then there’s traditional Korean fare and even tea houses or you can slip into a restaurant serving up Western style cuisine. There are also a ton of noodle places where one of cooks actuallys prepares the dough in the window; stretching, pulling, and preparing the dough for the oven.
You can also purchase plenty of handbags, knick knacks, scarves, hats, ties and most likely heaps of things that I didn’t spot. The day I went there was a performance going on. I think it was a competition of some sort but I wasn’t too sure. Different people in sashes took their turn singing for the crowd. It was nice.
Folks hard at work creating a Korean dish of some sort. Couldn’t pass up taking shots of the local public art. To reach Insadong take Subway line number 5 and get off at Jongno 3 Station exit 1 or Subway line 1 Jonggak Station exit 3.
The Jongno Tower is also nearby Insadong. Also Insadong runs into a huge downtown area. It truly was bustling with people going this way and that, scampering into boutiques or bookstores or cafes.
After Insadong you could keep wandering and find an untold number of things to see and experience. The streets just keep going and going. The area is also full of swanky looking hogwons luring Koreans in with neon drenched lights and big billboard signs. It seems like whenever I turned my head there was another language school beckoning me with its siren call.
Insadong is definitely an area I will be returning to and I hope you as well!
