Street Food at Gwangjang Market

Korean street food. Three words that will always, without a doubt, get my attention. As someone who's constantly hungry, the delicious options at the street food carts in Korea won me over instantly. Imagine my excitement, then, when a friend suggested stopping by Gwangjang Market in Seoul for dinner, telling me it offered basically every kind of street food imaginable...

One of the entrances to the food part of the market.

Gwangjang, (or Kwangjang, as it's sometimes spelled,) is one of Korea's oldest markets, dating back to 1905. Like most markets in the area, it's also an excellent spot for shopping.

However, we approached the market with the express purpose of eating, having spent the day shopping and wandering aroung the new Dongdaemun Design Plaza. As we entered the market, we were immediately overwhelmed with tons of stalls selling every kind of street food.

The little "restaurants" all look about like this -- a tiny kitchen surrounded by a counter with stools.

One of the main aisles of the market.

We walked the length of one of the aisles, taking in all of our options, before we decided to pick a spot with some empty seats and order. While we were walking, I kept noticing these tiny little rolls of gimbap stacked up. That's when I suddenly remembered that I'd read about this market and this particular kind of gimbap: aka drug gimbap. 

Give me all the drug gimbap you have.

Of course, this gimbap doesn't contain any drugs. Its name, mayak gimbap, which means "drug gimbap," refers to the "addictive" quality of these little bite-sized pieces of gimbap and the mustard-soy dipping sauce it's served with. I'd been curious to try it out since reading about it in a blog, and they weren't exaggerating -- it's goooood. Between the sauce and the small bites, it really is easy to just pop one into your mouth after another. 

If you're looking for this gimbap in the market, you can keep an eye out for the gimbap rolls themselves, or any sign that reads "마약 김밥" (mayak gimbap), like the white sign behind her head in the photo.

So many foods to try! I wanted to order everything.

While I ate my gimbap, my friends ordered one of Gwangjang Market's other popular eats: bindaetteok, which is a fried pancake made of ground mung beans. Crispy and hot, everyone happily inhaled these.

The sauce for the gimbap = perfect.

After eating as much as we could, we were shooed along by the women running the stall -- a queue had formed behind us of customers who were waiting to sit down and order food. Definitely approach this market with patience, especially if you go around dinner time as it gets quite busy.

On the way out, I decided I needed something sweet, and immediately began scanning signs for hotteok, which is a simple fried pancake filled with brown sugar, cinnamon, and nuts. As it's cooked, the filling turns into a sweet, syrupy mess and it's absolutely heavenly. 

I will find any possible opportunity to eat hotteok.

Like most street food, grabbing a meal at Gwangjang Market is cheap. Really, really cheap. A serving of the mayak gimbap and one hotteok only set me back 3,500 won. That's less than $3.50 USD. The bindaetteok were 4,000 won each. There's so much more that I didn't get to try, too, so I'm definitely going to be making future trips to this market when I'm back in the area. 

Directions & Information:

• Jongno 5-ga Station, Seoul Metro Line 1, Exit 8 -or- Euljiro 4-ga Station, Seoul Metro Lines 2 and 5, Exit 4. 
• Hours: 10am to 9-10pm. Hours will vary from stall to stall.
• Pro tip: Bring cash. Most of these stalls don't accept cards.
• For more information, check out Trazy's site for the market.

I highly recommend stopping by Gwangjang Market if you're looking for delicious street food (and shopping, too!). Not only is it an experience within itself, it's also just a good spot to grab dinner after you've spent the day wandering around Seoul's markets! 

Crafty DIYer's Paradise: Dongdaemun Fabric & Craft Market

Imagine a warehouse with tiny booths packed so full they look ready to explode. Imagine each booth fill with fabrics and yarn and beads. Imagine narrow little aisles stretching out into an impossible maze. Multiply this by a thousand and put it into one six floor building. Voila, you have Seoul's Dongdaemun Fabric and Craft Market. It's a total sensory overload of colors and textures and people, but for the crafty DIYer, it's basically heaven.

Living in Korea, I often miss the giant craft superstores from home. I've always been artsy, and the latest DIY trend that's been facilitated by the likes of Pinterest has kept me busy with dreaming up all the amazing things I want to make. Unfortunately, supplies are limited in my area -- if craft stores exist, I have yet to find them. Stationery stores abound, so anything paper-craft related isn't hard to track down. Art supplies are also easy, so I haven't had to go without good paints or drawing pencils. One thing that was notably missing, however, was any form of textiles and jewelry-making stuffs. I like to tell myself each winter that this is the year I'm going to finish knitting that scarf and maybe learn a fancy (beginner) pattern. Honestly, the lack of yarn availability was really harming my grand daydreams of starting scarves that I never get around to finishing.

Enter Dongdaemun's fabric and craft market, with both of these things (and many others) aplenty.

I'm not exaggerating when I say Dongdaemun's Fabric and Craft Market has pretty much anything craft-related that you'd be looking for. Any kind of fabric (including a massive section just for hanboks), endless skeins of yarn, giant carts of ribbons, all the pendants and charms and beads you could possibly want... That's just the beginning. In addition to all of that, you can buy things already made. They sell clothes, little decorative lace collars, leather belts, blankets, dishes, embellished hats and jackets... It's insane.

See? I wasn't kidding. They have -everything-.

The last time I went on a craft supply run, we arrived around 11am and the place was already bustling with shoppers and supply deliveries. We had to dodge quite a few delivery men as they plowed down the narrow aisles with giant bolts of fabric on their backs.

Nearly all the stalls are packed full like this.

The prices at Dongdaemun are great -- definitely cheaper than what I would expect to pay back home. I needed fuzzy white fleece for my Halloween costume last year, and when I finally found the right fabric, I was happy to hear that a yard (the smallest amount they would give me) was only ₩7,000 (~$6.60 USD). To make it better, the amount given to me was definitely more than a yard.

Need to replace any buttons? I'm 99% sure you could find any button ever here.

The biggest draw of Dongdaemun for me, however, is all the jewelry-making supplies. I used to have a fierce obsession with seed beads and even had a small bead loom for making bracelets. As I got older, I was way more into buying chains and charms and stringing things together. Not only am I able to make basically the exact same necklaces as I would find at Forever21 or Urban Outfitters, but it's a hell of a lot cheaper.

We spent a really, really long time searching through the little trays of charms and beads, carefully picking out ones we wanted. About ₩15,000 (~$14 USD) later, I had everything to make several pairs of earrings and new charms for some chains I already had at home. Not bad! 

Overwhelming, but awesome.

My jewelry supply haul! 

To get to Dongdaemun:

Dongdaemun Station, Seoul Metro Lines 1 and 4, exit 9. Walk straight out of exit 9, the entrance will be on your left. See the photos below as a reference: 

   

Tips and information:

• Hours: Monday-Saturday, 8:00am-6:00pm, though be aware that many shops start to close by 5pm.
• Bring cash, as most vendors prefer that / don't accept cards.
• Shop around -- a lot of the vendors sell similar products, but some definitely offer lower prices. 
• The building is divided into four sections, lettered A, B, C, and D, so keep an eye on those are you walk around. (It might also help you not get too lost...)

Photo Blog: Time Warp at the Seoul Folk Flea Market

If you were take a Goodwill thrift store and mix it with equal parts antique shop and estate sale, then throw in a pinch of distinctly Asian flair, the result would be the Seoul Folk Flea Market. Some friends and I stumbled across this amazing market by accident -- we'd set out looking for a completely different market and managed to get completely lost. Luckily, losing our way was the best possible thing to have happened because the market we did find greatly exceeded our expectations.

Though I'm slightly upset that it took me two years to find this market, it's probably also for the best. If I'd known about all the vintage and antique things in that that building holds when I was first decorating my apartment in 2011, it would've been dangerous... That being said, this is definitely a new go-to spot for gifts and souvenirs. 

The flea market was only recently put into an actual building in 2008, with its origins being in the street vendors that used to cluster around that area of the Cheonggyecheon Stream. Now it boasts hundreds of vendors and offers a staggering range of items.

Lucky for us (and you), a respectable amount of effort has been put into making this market organized and tourist-friendly. As we walked around, we noticed that the different areas of the market are color-coded, as you can see in the pictures above, from the signs hanging above the aisles to the tarps that pulled down over the booths. Here's a basic breakdown of the zones: 

• Yellow = household goods, personal goods, vintage clothes, accessories.
• Orange = vintage clothes, shoes, bags.
• Green = antiques, used goods.
• Red = food court!
• Indigo = tools, bicycle accessories, repair items.
• Blue = clothes (sports, men's, military).
• Purple = leisure, cameras, clothing.

Aside from the obviously ancient antiques that makes the market kind of feel like a museum, looking through most of the booths was like a bizarre time warp through the past 50 years. I say bizarre because of the number of very American (and generally Western) items that were being sold, which I can only assume are leftovers from the Korean War and Korea's subsequent modernization. The entire building is just steeped in nostalgia, making any attempt to shop with purpose nearly impossible due to the overwhelming desire to just carefully look at everything.

Directions and information: 

• Sinseoldong Station, Exit 10. 
• Walk straight out of the exit and around the corner on the left. You'll make a left at the Shinhan Bank. From there, look for signs and little lanterns hanging along the streetlights. The market will be on your left! (If you cross Cheonggyecheon Stream, you've gone too far.) 
• Hours: 10:00am - 7:00pm. Closed on every 2nd and 4th Tuesday. (Note: Many vendors close early, so I would advise going before 5:00pm.)