Lulu finds out at 9 p.m. on a Saturday that Bangsan Market is shut, and rebuilds her Dongdaemun Sunday into “open” and “closed”

At 9 p.m. on Saturday 21 November, Lulu had an empty shoebox on her desk and was looking up Bangsan Market’s opening hours on her phone. Lulu is twenty, born and raised in Seoul, and when she tells her friends about a place, she sends a video before she sends words. This time, though, she wanted to hand them something instead of a video: a small gift box each for Maya, Rina and Ethan at the end of the year. She would fill each box with a few things picked up around Seoul, layered one on top of another, and buy the wrapping supplies at Bangsan Market the next morning.

Stacking several things into one box was a very Lulu sort of plan. She always goes for places that “don’t fit into a single shot”, so a gift that ended at one item would never have satisfied her. But when she opened the merchants’ association’s business-hours notice for Bangsan Market, her finger stopped. Weekdays were 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturdays 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Sundays and public holidays were closed. Tomorrow was Sunday, and today’s Saturday trading had ended six hours earlier.

Lulu put the phone down, pressed a hand to her forehead and laughed for a good while. She was the one who had filmed Gwangjang Market on a Sunday for her friends, and who had even moved a Sunday plan for the Changsin-dong Stationery and Toy Market to a weekday. She knew better than anyone that the markets around Dongdaemun split on Sundays, and yet she had never once checked Sunday for the shop that sold her wrapping supplies. She pushed the empty box to one side of the desk and took out a sheet of paper. Rather than write off tomorrow altogether, she decided to rebuild the day around the places that open on Sundays.

Today’s plan covers three places between Dongdaemun and Jongno that open on Sundays. In the late morning, you come out of Exit 3 of Dongmyo Station on Lines 1 and 6, wander Dongmyo Flea Market, then follow the road lined with stalls and walk on through the Changsin-dong lanes. Lunch is at Gwangjang Market’s Food Alley, by Exit 8 of Jongno 5-ga Station on Line 1. Bangsan Market and Jungbu Dried Seafood Market come out of the Sunday plan and move to a weekday. Lulu drew a line down the middle of the paper and wrote “Open” above the left column and “Closed” above the right.

The Cue — At a glance

On Sundays around Dongdaemun and Jongno, Dongmyo Flea Market and Gwangjang Market’s Food Alley are open, while Bangsan Market and Gwangjang Market’s main market are closed. For a Sunday, walk Dongmyo Flea Market → the Changsin-dong lanes → Gwangjang Market’s Food Alley, and move Bangsan Market and Jungbu Dried Seafood Market, which closes on the first and third Sundays, to a weekday. The wholesale malls that do open on Sundays open in the evening, not during the day.

Which Dongdaemun markets open on Sundays, and which close? Two columns: open and closed

Around Dongdaemun, every market gives a different answer on a Sunday. Even in the same neighbourhood, some markets trade all day on Sundays too, while others keep their shutters down from morning to night. That was why Lulu split her paper into two columns. As she looked up each market and moved its name into a column, the places for browsing and eating gathered on the left, and the places that supply materials and goods gathered on the right. Looking at the shape of it, she muttered, “Browse on Sunday, and buy the supplies on a weekday. That’s better.”

Open in Kakao Map — Dongmyo Station

As announced in November 2026.

In the open table, look at the first figure in the hours column before you look at the names. The top four rows open during the day, but the bottom three don’t open until 8 p.m. If you see “open on Sundays” and turn up at apM or DDP Fashion Mall on a Sunday afternoon, the doors will be shut. Lulu had first written these three straight into the left column too, then drew another line across it and labelled the top “Day” and the bottom “Night”. That was when she realised the places open on Sundays needed splitting in two as well.

As announced in November 2026.

The closed table holds three kinds of “closed”. Bangsan Market and Cheongpyeonghwa Market close for the whole of Sunday, while at Gwangjang Market only the Food Alley opens and the standard hours and the vintage arcade are closed. Jungbu Dried Seafood Market doesn’t close every Sunday, but twice a month, on the first and third Sundays. Once Lulu had moved every name into the right column, she put the same mark next to Bangsan Market and Jungbu Dried Seafood Market. Both were markets that would supply things for her boxes, so both had to come out of the Sunday plan.

Is Bangsan Market open on Sundays? Closed on Sundays and public holidays, open until 3 p.m. on Saturdays

Bangsan Market is closed on Sundays. Public holidays are closing days too, so even when it isn’t a Sunday, a red day on the calendar means rethinking any plan for this market. It opens from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays and from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturdays. If you had planned to go on a Sunday, the easiest fix is to bring it forward to before 3 p.m. on the Saturday. If you have time to spare, a weekday, when it stays open until 6 p.m., is more relaxed.

That Saturday was exactly what Lulu had missed. Because she tends to plan her Sundays on Saturday night, by the time she opened the timetable, even Saturday, the fallback, had already gone. Saturday trading ends at 3 p.m., so it is safer to look at a Sunday Bangsan plan on Friday night. That leaves time to move it to Saturday morning. Lulu decided to make this order the first caption of her video for her friends, and wrote small at the foot of the right column: “Bangsan — weekday morning, or before 3 on Saturday”.

Bangsan Market is on the Euljiro 4-ga Station side, so it pairs easily with other markets that use the same station. The next place Lulu thought of was Jungbu Dried Seafood Market, not far from there. She wanted to line the bottom of each gift box with a taste of the Seoul sea. If she bought the wrapping supplies and the dried goods on the same day from the same station, one day would be enough to fill the boxes. She joined the two markets in a single line, “Euljiro 4-ga = Bangsan + Jungbu, in one go”, and set the day for a weekday the following week.

Is Jungbu Dried Seafood Market closed on Sundays? Closed on the first and third Sundays of every month from March 2026

Jungbu Dried Seafood Market has closed on the first and third Sundays of every month since March 2026. The Jungbu and Sinjungbu Market Merchants’ Association announced the regular closing days on 13 March 2026. The market sells dried goods and farm produce such as gim (dried laver), anchovies, squid, seaweed, dried pollack, gulbi (salted yellow croaker), jeotgal (salted seafood) and dried vegetables. It is about a 5-minute walk from Exit 7 or 8 of Euljiro 4-ga Station, at 111 Mareunnae-ro, Jung-gu, Seoul. The gim Lulu wanted for her boxes was the first item on the market’s list.

This market is easy to get wrong, because its hours and its closing days are posted in different places. The opening hours on the market’s website say only that retail runs from 3 a.m. to 6 p.m. and wholesale consignment from 2 a.m. to 1 p.m., with no days of the week and no line for Sunday. The first- and third-Sunday closures appear only in a separate notice. So if you read just the hours and turn up on the morning of a first or third Sunday, it will be shut. Lulu, too, saw only the figure 3 a.m. and thought, “I’ll just go early, then.” It was only when she scrolled down to the notices that she found the line about Sundays.

When you pair the two markets on a weekday, look at the closing times as well. Retail at Jungbu Dried Seafood Market ends at 6 p.m., and Bangsan Market also closes at 6 p.m. on weekdays. As both finish at the same hour, it is more relaxed to split them, one in the morning and one after lunch, than to cram both into the late afternoon. From 2 a.m. to 1 p.m. is wholesale consignment time, so if you are buying retail, go during the retail hours, 3 a.m. to 6 p.m. In her weekday column Lulu noted “Morning Bangsan → Jungbu after lunch”.

Written out as dates, the Sundays when Jungbu Dried Seafood Market is closed are 15 November 2026, 6 and 20 December, and 3 and 17 January 2027. They are the first Sunday of each month and the Sunday two weeks later, so once you find the first Sunday of the month on the calendar, you have both dates at once. Set your dried-goods shopping for a weekday, and if you do pick a Sunday, cross out the first and third Sundays of that month first. For other dates, you can ask the merchants’ association on its main number, 02-2273-0006. This rule doesn’t end like an event — it comes round every month, so the same counting works whenever you visit.

Dates from the March 2026 regular-closure notice, laid on the calendar. As announced in November 2026.

Once the table was done, Lulu crossed out one more thing she had meant to do. She had briefly thought of moving just the dried-goods market to a Sunday in December, but turning the calendar showed that of December’s four Sundays, the 6th and the 20th were closing days. The Sunday just gone, 15 November, had been a third Sunday and a closing day as well, so if she had pushed it to a Sunday, she might well have made the same mistake twice. Lulu put “12/6 · 12/20 X” into her calendar app and moved the dried-goods market to the same weekday as Bangsan Market.

How should you plan a Sunday in Dongdaemun? Dongmyo Flea Market → the Changsin-dong lanes → Gwangjang Market’s Food Alley

For a Sunday, the easiest order is to start at Dongmyo Flea Market, walk on through the Changsin-dong lanes and finish at Gwangjang Market’s Food Alley. Dongmyo Flea Market runs all day at weekends, so a late Sunday morning is a good time to begin. The Changsin-dong Stationery and Toy Street carries on if you walk past the flea market and follow the road, and Gwangjang Market’s Food Alley has no closing day all year. Lulu numbered the top three lines of her left column 1, 2 and 3. It was a route that didn’t pass through a single market from the right column.

You only need to remember two exits. Dongmyo Flea Market is 61 m from Exit 3 of Dongmyo Station on Lines 1 and 6. Gwangjang Market is 62 m from Exit 8 of Jongno 5-ga Station on Line 1, or 100 m from Exit 4 of Euljiro 4-ga Station if you are on Lines 2 or 5. Dongmyo and Jongno 5-ga are both on Line 1, so there is no change between Dongmyo and Gwangjang Market. Lulu wrote these two exit numbers large at the bottom of her paper.

You can be generous with time. Around Dongmyo, the natural order is to start at Dongmyo Shrine, wander through the flea market and walk on to the Changsin-dong Stationery and Toy Street, and just browsing the flea market and the Changsin-dong street takes an hour or two. So if you start at Dongmyo in the late morning, you reach Gwangjang Market around lunchtime. The Food Alley stays open until 11 p.m., so there is no need to hurry even if lunch runs a little late. Only once the order was settled did Lulu switch off the light and lie down with her mind at ease.

Is Dongmyo Flea Market open on Sundays? All day at weekends, 61 m from Dongmyo Station Exit 3

Dongmyo Flea Market is open on Sundays too. On weekdays it is partly open, and at weekends the market runs all day. Walk just 61 m from Exit 3 of Dongmyo Station and you see the market: parasols and pop-up stalls stretching along a stone wall topped with roof tiles. Second-hand clothes, shoes and bags hung in rows from the racks, and people drifted slowly between them. Lulu, who had dug out her thick winter coat now the weather had turned cold, slowed her pace among them too.

Lulu decided to pick one thing per friend at the market, to sit at the top of each box. For Maya, who takes photos, a small hand mirror with a worn back. For Rina, who writes things down in neat columns, a bundle of old postcards. And for Ethan, who measures things, a small glass bottle etched with a scale. On its own each was nothing much, but once the gim and the wrapping went in underneath, each box would have several layers. Lulu photographed each find on her phone and worked out in her head the order they would go into the boxes. She didn’t have the wrapping supplies yet, but the top layer was done on Sunday.

As you walk the market, tiled roofs show above the stone wall. Inside the wall is Dongmyo Shrine, and from above you can see the stone wall enclosing the main hall, with its tiled roof and red pillars, and blue parasol stalls lining the pavement outside the wall. Standing in front of the wall, Lulu raised her phone and filmed slowly downwards from the roofline. Starting at the tiled roof and coming down to the parasol stalls, that one shot held both the shrine inside the wall and the market outside it.

Lulu also keeps to an order when she films at a busy Sunday market. First she steps to one side so she isn’t blocking a stall, and she points the camera only at the goods and the street, not at the stallholders’ faces. When she picks something up, she looks briefly and puts it back, and she doesn’t hold on to things she isn’t going to buy. After each shot she lowers the phone and keeps walking. At weekends the market runs all day and people keep coming and going, so just keeping to this order makes things easier for everyone.

Is the Changsin-dong Stationery and Toy Market open on Sundays? On a Sunday, treat it as a lane to walk through

The Changsin-dong Stationery and Toy Market opens from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays, and its weekend hours are irregular. If you are going to buy toys or stationery, a weekday is the stress-free choice. That was why Lulu had moved her Sunday plan to a Wednesday morning last time. This Sunday she included the lanes not as a place to stop and shop, but only as a route to walk through on her way from Dongmyo. Walk past the flea market and follow the road, and you come into the Changsin-dong Stationery and Toy Street, so it fitted neatly as the middle part of a day joined up on foot.

As she entered the lanes, rather than peering into each shopfront, Lulu held her phone out far enough to take in the whole lane. What this video needed to show wasn’t which shops were open, but how the road from Dongmyo carries on into these lanes. She filmed right to the end of the lane in one go without stopping. Put next to last time’s Wednesday video, it would show the same lanes on a weekday and on a Sunday at a glance. In her notes she wrote briefly: “Changsin-dong — shop on weekdays, walk through on Sundays”.

If you are only going to the Changsin-dong Stationery and Toy Market, come out of Exit 6 of Dongmyo Station. From Exit 6 to the market is 164 m. It is the same station as Dongmyo Flea Market with a different exit, so take Exit 3 for the flea market and Exit 6 for the stationery and toy market. If, like Lulu, you are walking from one to the other, come out of Exit 3 and start with the flea market. On a Sunday, keep the stationery and toy market part of the plan short, and if there is something you need to buy, move it into the weekday column.

Is Gwangjang Market’s Food Alley open on Sundays? 09:00–23:00, 62 m from Jongno 5-ga Station Exit 8

Lulu went back to Dongmyo Station, took Line 1 and got off at Jongno 5-ga. From Exit 8 to Gwangjang Market is 62 m, and if you come on Lines 2 or 5, it is 100 m from Exit 4 of Euljiro 4-ga Station. The address is 88 Changgyeonggung-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul. Lulu, who had kept one slot free for Sunday lunch, turned towards the Food Alley the moment she came out of the exit.

Gwangjang Market’s Food Alley is open from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Sundays too, and has no closing day all year. Within the same market, though, the standard hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and the closing day is Sunday. The vintage arcade opens from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and is closed on Sundays, but opens as normal on public holidays. So on a Sunday, Gwangjang Market has an open side and a closed side under the same roof. When Lulu filmed the shuttered passages first and then crossed into the Food Alley in her earlier Sunday video, it was this difference she meant to show.

This time she didn’t film the shutters again and went straight into the Food Alley. The market’s best-loved dishes include mung bean bindaetteok, modum-jeon (assorted savoury pancakes), mayak gimbap, sundae (Korean sausage) and yukhoe (beef tartare). Lulu chose one bindaetteok just fried on the big griddle. With the first bite, her fingertips, chilled from walking all morning, warmed up a little. Saying there ought to be at least one taste of Seoul that couldn’t go in a box, she took one picture of the bindaetteok plate on her phone.

If you want your Sunday to run into the evening, the Food Alley is the last place on this route to close. Even after a late morning at Dongmyo Flea Market, a walk through the Changsin-dong lanes and lunch, the Food Alley is still open until 11 p.m. On a Sunday, when the standard hours and the vintage arcade are closed, you don’t have to think about the two closing times of 6 and 7 p.m. at all. If anything is still unclear, you can ask Gwangjang Market on 02-2267-0291.

While she ate the bindaetteok, Lulu posted one photo of her two-column paper to the group chat the four of them share. It showed market names packed into the boxes made by the vertical and horizontal lines, and the first reply came from Maya, a friend since before Seoul. “The open column’s longer. Sunday looks fine, doesn’t it?” Lulu laughed and wrote back, “Yep. But the boxes get bought on a weekday.” The box plan was still a secret, so before Maya could ask what boxes, she quickly posted another photo of the bindaetteok.

Maya was right that the left column was longer than the right. But half of it was places that open at night, not by day. Around Dongdaemun on a Sunday there are plenty of places to browse and eat, but almost all the places to buy materials and dried goods were in the right column. Lulu boiled the difference down to a single line of video caption: “Sunday: browse. Supplies: weekday.”

Which Dongdaemun malls open on Sunday evenings? apM at 8 p.m. and DDP Fashion Mall at 8.10 p.m., with Doota Mall and Migliore by day

Most of the Dongdaemun malls that open on Sunday evenings are wholesale buildings. The three apM buildings, apM, apM Luxe and apM Place, open at 8 p.m. on Sundays and close at 5 a.m. on Monday, and they are closed on Fridays and Saturdays. A free shuttle bus runs between the three buildings from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. DDP Fashion Mall opens at 8.10 p.m. on Sundays and trades until 5 a.m., and it is closed on Fridays, Saturdays and during major holidays. Jeil Pyeonghwa Market also opens at 8 p.m. on Sundays and trades until 5 a.m.

These night-time buildings deal with wholesale buyers and businesses rather than travellers. They sell at wholesale prices, so tourist tax refunds aren’t available in wholesale buildings like these. apM is about a 3-minute walk from Exit 14 of Dongdaemun History & Culture Park Station. Even if you see these buildings lit up after 8 p.m. on a Sunday, knowing they are a different kind of place from where travellers go shopping saves a wasted trip. Next to the “Night” line in her left column, Lulu added “8 p.m. = wholesale”.

If you want to look round Dongdaemun’s malls on a Sunday afternoon, Doota Mall and Migliore open during the day. Doota Mall opens from 10.30 a.m. to midnight, Monday to Sunday, and is a 5-minute walk from Exit 8 of Dongdaemun Station, or you can use Exit 14 of Dongdaemun History & Culture Park Station. Migliore’s shopping floors open from 10.30 a.m. to 2 a.m. the next day and close on Mondays. As it opens on Sundays and closes on Mondays, take care not to mix up Sunday afternoon and Monday. Lulu wrote these two names at the bottom of the “Day” line in her left column.

Cheongpyeonghwa Market is the opposite. It trades on weekdays, closes on Saturdays and Sundays, and shuts early on public holidays. Closures for Seollal, Chuseok and the summer holiday are posted separately on its website and inside the building, so if you are going around those times, you can ring 02-2252-8036. For a mall that closes for the whole weekend, the simplest thing is to leave it out of your Sunday plan altogether. Lulu wrote Cheongpyeonghwa Market in the right column and put the same mark once more in her Saturday column.

Lulu’s gift boxes, rebuilt as a Sunday edition — the layers to fill on a weekday

On Sunday night, Lulu laid the three things she had picked at Dongmyo side by side next to the empty shoebox on her desk: a hand mirror with a worn back, a bundle of old postcards and a small glass bottle etched with a scale. With no wrapping paper or ribbon, it looked less like a gift box and more like three things standing in a row, but Lulu liked the row. Over the day, the order had settled itself: the top layer of each box filled on Sunday, the layers below on a weekday.

Common Mistakes

• 01

  Checking a Sunday Bangsan plan on Saturday night

  Lulu opened the timetable at 9 p.m. on Saturday, after Saturday trading had already ended. Check on Friday night and you can still move it to Saturday morning.

• 02

  Going to Jungbu Dried Seafood Market on a Sunday after reading only the hours

  Lulu, too, saw the figure 3 a.m. and thought she would just go early. The first- and third-Sunday closures are only in a separate notice.

• 03

  Turning up at apM or DDP Fashion Mall on a Sunday afternoon

  Lulu, too, first wrote both straight into “Open”, then drew a separate “Night” line. For malls by day, it is Doota Mall and Migliore.

• 04

  Trying to get a tax refund in a wholesale building

  Tourist tax refunds aren’t available in wholesale buildings such as apM.

• 05

  Planning to shop at the Changsin-dong Stationery and Toy Market on a Sunday

  Last time, Lulu moved her shopping plan to a Wednesday morning. On a Sunday, include it only as a lane to walk through.

• 06

  Going to Migliore on a Monday

  Migliore opens on Sundays and closes on Mondays.

FAQ

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