Myeongdong — Shopping & Street Food★★
Myeongdong (명동) is Seoul's bustling shopping heart — a maze of streets and alleys, crammed with K-Beauty shops (Innisfree, Etude House, Olive Young, Tony Moly), international brands, and one of the city's best street food offerings.
In the evening, Myeongdong transforms into an open-air food festival: dozens of stalls offer Egg Bread (Gyeran-ppang, ₩2,000), Hotteok (sweet pancakes with nut-sugar filling, ₩1,500), Tornado Potato on skewers, Tteokbokki, Korean fried chicken, and more. The prices are touristy, but the selection is unbeatable.
For K-Beauty fans, Myeongdong is paradise: Here you'll find more cosmetic stores per square meter than anywhere else in the world. Sheet masks from ₩1,000 (0.70 €), serums, sunscreen — Korean skincare is world-famous, and here you buy directly at the source. Olive Young is the best all-round store for international K-Beauty.
Nearby: The Myeongdong Cathedral (1898) is Korea's oldest Catholic cathedral and historically significant as a refuge during the democracy movement of the 1980s. And the Namdaemun Market (Seoul's largest traditional market) is just a block away.
💡 Tipp
Myeongdong is best in the evening (from 5 pm), when the street food stalls open and the neon lights come on. K-Beauty tip: The shops compete with free samples — collect your way through the stores and test the products at the hotel.
