Hina walks Namdaemun Market’s Stationery Alley on a Sunday morning, with a timetable by day

On the morning of Sunday 29 November, Hina has her notepad open on the desk in her room and is ruling lines across the page with the tip of a ballpoint pen. She is twenty-one and promotes shows for a marketing company in Tokyo, and she often comes to Seoul for shows and merchandise. On the way back from last night’s show, she remembered one job still to do. She needs ribbon and shopping bags to wrap small gifts for the colleagues who worked with her on promoting this show, and clear bags to hold, one by one, the cards she has collected.

The first thing Hina does is search. She types “Namdaemun stationery toy street” into the search bar and finds her way to the Namdaemun Market website. But in the website’s list of speciality alleys, the alley has a different name: “Stationery Alley” (Mungu Golmok, 문구골목). Hina crosses out the “Stationery and toy street?” at the top of her notepad, and next to it writes “Stationery Alley” carefully, letter by letter. Working in show promotion, Hina knows well that one wrong name can tangle every plan that follows.

Next come the hours. Today is Sunday, after all. The market website lists six stationery shops, and Hina opens each shop’s page in turn, copying down its hours and its closing days. When she has finished, four of the six have the same words in the closing-day box: “every Sunday”. True to her usual line, “I always start with the showtime,” Hina copies the hours of the two shops open on Sunday into her notepad first, in big letters.

The Cue — At a glance

Of the six shops listed as stationery shops on the Namdaemun Market website, two open on Sunday: Alpha Mungu (알파문구), 10:30–19:00, and Jinyeong Pojang (진영포장), 07:00–18:00. Seomun Pojang (서문포장), Seonheung Office (선흥오피스), Daedo Jimul (대도지물) and Daedo (대도) close every Sunday. The alley’s official name is Stationery Alley, and it is the alley with the Alpha Mungu building. Namdaemun Market is a five-minute walk from Hoehyeon Station Exits 5, 6 and 7 on Line 4. Compared with other wholesale arcades, many things here can be bought singly, so it is an easy stop for travellers who don’t need large quantities.

The real name of Namdaemun’s “stationery street” — Stationery Alley, where everything for writing and drawing gathers

The official name of the alley that sells stationery in Namdaemun Market is Stationery Alley. The alley stocks goods for writing and drawing, from erasers and pencils to map supplies and art materials, along with office supplies. Its main goods are stationery, shopping bags and art supplies. A stationery shop tends to bring only notebooks and pens to mind, but this alley gathers wrapping materials and drawing tools in the same place. On the alley’s page, Hina underlines the words “for writing and drawing”.

Open in Kakao Map — Hoehyeon Station

There is a reason for that underline. Hina and Noah have been swapping “maps with times written on them”. She was only going for ribbon and bags, but now she wants to pick out a pen for drawing maps as well. At the very bottom of her to-do list, Hina adds one line: “Map pen — Alpha Mungu”. As it happens, Alpha Mungu, open even on Sunday, is the shop that sells stationery and art supplies.

There was a reason, too, why Hina first searched for a “stationery toy street”. In the Korea Tourism Organization’s travel information, the same place appears under the name “Namdaemun Stationery Arcade” (남대문 문구상가), described as a street where shops for stationery, toys and packaging supplies gather. The nickname “Mungugol” (문구골) is on the same screen. The goods Hina copied down for the six shops are stationery, wrapping materials, art supplies and ribbon. For Hina, who needs wrapping materials more than toys, the alley is an even better fit.

This arcade lays out school supplies, fancy goods, office supplies and art supplies by building and by floor. That makes it easy to look at many kinds of things in one trip, but it also means you find things faster if you know which building and which floor to head for. After reading this, Hina writes “Arcade = check each building and floor” in her notepad. It is a very Hina note: at merch booths too, each row sells something different, so somewhere new she always reads the signs first.

Where it is — five minutes on foot from Hoehyeon Station Exits 5, 6 and 7 to Namdaemun Market, in the alley with the Alpha Mungu building

Stationery Alley is inside Namdaemun Market. To reach the market, leave Hoehyeon Station on Line 4 by Exit 5, 6 or 7 and walk for five minutes. Hoehyeon is a station with “Namdaemun Market” added to its name. If you arrive at Seoul Station by KTX, the market is also a five-minute walk from Seoul Station. Hina chooses Line 4, which is close to where she is staying.

Line 4 is quiet on a Sunday morning. Hina stands by the door and watches the station names on the display. Next to Hoehyeon, “Namdaemun Market” appears in brackets. Hina circles “Hoehyeon 5, 6, 7” on the first line of her notepad. Three exits, and a five-minute walk to the market from any of them: for Hina, that is one blank in her timetable already filled.

Once inside the market, Stationery Alley is easy to find: it is the alley with the Alpha Mungu building. The market’s currency exchange is right here too, at “Stationery Alley (Alpha Mungu building)”. Hina, too, enters “알파문구” (Alpha Mungu) in her map app instead of the alley’s name. In a big market, one building shows up far more clearly on the screen than one alley.

Namdaemun Market is a big market, with up to 300,000 visitors a day. With so many people about, there may be a moment when you want to ask the way. When that happens, look for a market information desk. There are two: in front of the Cheongja Arcade at Gate 5, and in front of the Samho Accessory building at Gate 3. Hina notes both in the corner of her notepad and follows the map on her phone deeper into the market.

Open on Sunday — Alpha Mungu 10:30–19:00, Jinyeong Pojang 07:00–18:00

If you are heading to Stationery Alley on a Sunday, check the hours of Alpha Mungu and Jinyeong Pojang first. Alpha Mungu is open on Sunday from 10:30 to 19:00. Jinyeong Pojang is open at weekends from 07:00 to 18:00. Jinyeong Pojang doesn’t split Saturday and Sunday but gives its hours in a single “weekends” line, and the closing-day box on its shop page is empty. So on a Sunday from 07:00 to 10:30, Jinyeong Pojang is the only one of the six that is open.

Sunday is less confusing, because the two listings give the same hours. The alley’s listing says 10:30–19:00 for Saturday and Sunday, and Alpha Mungu’s shop page says 10:30–19:00 for Sunday. So if you want to see both shops on a Sunday, arrive after 10:30 and finish at Jinyeong Pojang before 18:00. After 18:00 Jinyeong Pojang closes, and Alpha Mungu stays open until 19:00. Hina copies these two times in bold at the front of the Sunday line in her notepad.

Hina reaches the market a little after ten. There are still about 30 minutes until Alpha Mungu opens. Hina looks at the Sunday line again and changes the order. She will stop first at Jinyeong Pojang, open since seven, and go to Alpha Mungu after 10:30. “If the opening act is late, you just watch another stage first,” she says to herself.

Jinyeong Pojang sells packaging materials, ribbon, shopping bags, plastic goods, boxes, envelopes, OPP and PP bags. Almost everything Hina is looking for is in one shop’s list of goods. The clear bags for the cards, one each, are OPP bags, and the shopping bags for the gifts and the ribbon to tie them are on the same line. Beside the three lines “ribbon, shopping bags, clear bags” in her notepad, Hina writes “Jinyeong”. If you need wrapping materials on a Sunday, remember this shop’s 18:00 close first.

A little after 10:30, Hina walks towards the Alpha Mungu building. Alpha Mungu sells stationery, art supplies and office supplies. Now it is time to fill in the “map pen” at the bottom of her to-do list. On Sunday Alpha Mungu is open until 19:00, an hour later than Jinyeong Pojang, which closes at 18:00. So if you arrive late on a Sunday afternoon, it is easier to buy wrapping materials first and look at stationery after.

Closed on Sunday — Seomun Pojang, Seonheung Office, Daedo Jimul and Daedo close every Sunday

Four shops, Seomun Pojang, Seonheung Office, Daedo Jimul and Daedo, close every Sunday. All four give the same closing day: “every Sunday”. All four are open on Saturdays and weekdays, so if you really need something from these shops, it is better to change the day. That is what Hina sees in the alley too. Here and there between the open shops, shuttered ones are mixed in.

The one Hina misses most is Daedo. Daedo sells imported ribbon, ribbon decorations, craft materials and event supplies. She had wanted to choose at least the ribbon for her colleagues’ gifts at a ribbon shop. But Daedo’s closing-day box says “every Sunday” too. Hina pouts for a moment, then remembers that ribbon was on Jinyeong Pojang’s list, and soon nods.

When a packaging shop is closed, find another shop that sells the same goods. Seomun Pojang sells shopping bags, wrapping paper, ribbon, boxes and plastic bags, and it also takes made-to-order work. Daedo Jimul sells wrapping paper, gift boxes, wrapping ribbon and gift-wrap supplies. Both close on Sunday, but shopping bags, ribbon and boxes are also on Jinyeong Pojang’s list. Know one shop whose goods overlap, and you won’t have to turn away at a closed shutter.

Still, if there is something you want to see only at that shop, like Daedo’s imported ribbon, the only way is to change the day. Daedo opens 08:00–19:00 on Saturday and 08:00–20:00 on weekdays. Daedo Jimul keeps the same hours as Daedo, 08:00–19:00 on Saturday and 08:00–20:00 on weekdays. Hina draws a star in the Daedo box on the Saturday line of her notepad. The next time she comes to Seoul on a Saturday, she will choose the ribbon, at least, at that shop.

Seonheung Office sells office supplies, school supplies, computer supplies and sundries. It closes every Sunday as well. On a Sunday when you need office supplies, Alpha Mungu, which also lists office supplies, is open. Beside the Sunday line, Hina writes “4 closed · 2 open” and draws lines joining the goods of the four closed shops to those of the two open ones. At a glance, she can see that there is less she can’t buy on a Sunday than she thought.

If you go on Saturday — shops that open at 7 a.m., and one that closes at 4 p.m.

On Saturday all six shops are open. Seomun Pojang and Jinyeong Pojang open at 07:00 on Saturday, and Seomun Pojang closes at 19:00, Jinyeong Pojang at 18:00. Seonheung Office is open from 08:00 to 16:00. Daedo Jimul and Daedo are open from 08:00 to 19:00. The four shops closed on Sunday are all open on Saturday, so weekend travellers who want to see Daedo’s imported ribbon or Seomun Pojang’s made-to-order work can drop in on the Saturday.

Alpha Mungu’s Saturday hours are written two ways. Its shop page gives 09:00–19:30 on Saturday. The market website’s Stationery Alley listing groups Saturday and Sunday together at 10:30–19:00. The time when both timetables say it is open runs from 10:30 to 19:00. If you really want to stop at Alpha Mungu on a Saturday, browsing within that window is the safe choice.

If you want to go round all six on a Saturday, Seonheung Office’s 16:00 close is the first thing to get in the way. Unlike the other five, which stay open until somewhere between 18:00 and 19:30, Seonheung Office closes at 4 p.m. At times like this, Hina puts the earliest-closing shop at the very top of her timetable. Take 10:30, when Alpha Mungu’s two timetables overlap, as your starting point, and all six shops stay open together until 4 p.m. If office or school supplies are on your list, start at Seonheung Office.

On a Saturday evening, it helps to know the order in which the shops close. Jinyeong Pojang closes first, at 18:00. Seomun Pojang, Daedo Jimul and Daedo close at 19:00. Alpha Mungu is listed at 19:30 on its shop page and at 19:00 in the alley listing, so if you go late, finish shopping before 19:00. Try planning it as Jinyeong Pojang before 18:00 and the other shops before 19:00.

Thinking ahead to a visit that falls on a Saturday, Hina fills in the Saturday line separately too. At the top she writes “07:00 Seomun, Jinyeong”, and below it “08:00 Seonheung, Daedo Jimul, Daedo”. In the Alpha Mungu box she writes the two times side by side, “09:00? 10:30?”, with two question marks. And at the very bottom, in bold, she writes “Seonheung 16:00 — first!” It is the same rule as on show days, when she goes first to the merch booth whose queue closes earliest.

If you go on a weekday — all six shops open, from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

On weekdays all six shops are open, and they also close latest. Seomun Pojang and Jinyeong Pojang are open on weekdays from 07:00 to 20:00. Daedo Jimul and Daedo are open from 08:00 to 20:00. Seonheung Office is open from 08:00 to 19:30. Alpha Mungu is open on weekdays from 08:30 to 20:00.

On weekdays, the alley listing and Alpha Mungu’s shop page give the same hours. Both say 08:30–20:00 on weekdays. So weekday hours leave less room for confusion than the weekend. All six shops are open together from 08:30, when Alpha Mungu opens, until 19:30, when Seonheung Office closes. If you drop in early, as if on the way to work, go in the order Seomun Pojang and Jinyeong Pojang at 7, Seonheung Office, Daedo Jimul and Daedo at 8, then Alpha Mungu at 8:30, and you won’t have to wait at any door.

As she fills in the weekday line, Hina stops her pen and smiles. The weekdays she spends in Seoul are usually the day before a show, so her evenings are often free. On weekdays Seonheung Office closes at 19:30 and the other five at 20:00. That leaves plenty of time to walk round the alley once before dinner. Beside the weekday line, Hina writes in small letters: “Evening before a show OK”.

Namdaemun Market is a market where each shop keeps its own hours. Opening times are set separately for each arcade and each shop. That is why Hina made a separate timetable for each day. There is no single set of hours for the whole market — each shop you visit has its own. Once you have decided which shops to visit, write down each one’s hours by day first, and planning gets easier.

What each shop sells — four of the six are for wrapping, and stationery and art supplies are at Alpha Mungu

Of the six stationery shops on the market website, four sell wrapping materials and ribbon. Seomun Pojang, Jinyeong Pojang and Daedo Jimul sell wrapping materials such as wrapping paper, shopping bags and boxes. Daedo sells imported ribbon, ribbon decorations and event supplies. The other two are Alpha Mungu (stationery, art supplies, office supplies) and Seonheung Office (office supplies, school supplies, computer supplies, sundries). If you come on the strength of the name Stationery Alley alone, the number of packaging shops comes as a surprise.

The goods chart Hina draws in her notepad shows the same. She writes the six shops down the side and draws four columns across, “ribbon”, “shopping bags”, “envelopes”, “pens”, and most of the circles cluster on the packaging shops’ side. “It’s called Stationery Alley, but four of the six are packaging shops,” Hina says to herself with a laugh. For travellers leaving Seoul with gifts, it is a welcome mix. You can buy a gift and, in the same alley, pick the materials to wrap it there and then and carry it home.

Laying the lists of goods over one another makes choosing a day easier too. Ribbon is at Seomun Pojang, Jinyeong Pojang and Daedo, and Daedo Jimul has wrapping ribbon. Shopping bags are at Seomun Pojang and Jinyeong Pojang, and boxes at Seomun Pojang, Jinyeong Pojang and Daedo Jimul (gift boxes). Bags are split between Seomun Pojang’s plastic bags and Jinyeong Pojang’s envelopes, OPP and PP bags. Even on a Sunday, most of these overlapping goods can be found at Jinyeong Pojang alone.

Seomun Pojang also lists made-to-order work among its goods. That is useful for anyone thinking of having something made. But Seomun Pojang is closed on Sunday, so if you are thinking of an order, drop in on a weekday or a Saturday. Beside this item, Hina writes “Next time — wrapping for show merch?” For Hina, who works in promotion, it is a note closer to her next job than to today’s shopping.

Alpha Mungu is the shop in this alley that covers the tools for writing and drawing. It sells stationery, art supplies and office supplies. Hina decides to look for a pen for drawing maps here. The exchange counter in the same building is useful to know as a traveller too. If you are short of won, you can sort that out in the same building before you choose your stationery.

Before going into Alpha Mungu, Hina looks over the to-do list in her notepad again. The only thing left on her list is a single line: a pen for drawing maps. So she leaves browsing for anything else to her next visit, and chooses just the pen. At a show, too, on days when there is only one piece of merch to buy, Hina heads straight for that booth.

Can you buy single items? — one at a time in a wholesale alley, only as many as you need

In Stationery Alley, many things can be bought singly. Compared with other wholesale arcades, a good number of goods can be bought one at a time. Namdaemun Market is also a market that combines wholesale and retail, selling both to retailers from all over the country and to shoppers who come in person. So travellers who don’t need large quantities can drop in without worry. For someone like Hina, buying just enough to wrap a few gifts, it is just the right alley.

At first Hina hesitated a little when she heard the words wholesale alley. If they only sold in bundles, it would not all fit in her suitcase, and she worried about carrying the leftovers all the way back to Tokyo. Only after reading the line saying many things can be bought singly did she start filling in the “How many?” box in her notepad. Five gifts meant five lengths of ribbon, and twenty cards meant twenty bags. Count what you need before you go, and choosing in the alley is much quicker.

Buying single items doesn’t take the fun out of choosing. Hina spends a long time matching ribbon colours to her five colleagues, one each. Pink goes to the senior colleague she always worked late with, and cream to the newest junior on the team. Hina writes down the card size and the number of bags she needs. Because she can choose one at a time, she has time to picture the face of each person who will receive a gift.

Some shops also run online stores. If you find a shop you like in the alley while travelling, there is one more way to find the same shop again after you get home. Hina writes the names of the shops she visited today on a separate page at the back of her notepad. When the day comes to wrap show merch again, that list is the first thing she plans to open. If her next visit to Seoul falls on a weekday, Seomun Pojang’s made-to-order work will go on that list too.

Leaving Stationery Alley — a Sunday timetable sent to Noah

A little after eleven, Hina leaves the alley and walks towards Hoehyeon Station. In the bag on her shoulder are ribbon, shopping bags and clear bags. The map pen she chose at Alpha Mungu is tucked into the front pocket. At the alley entrance, Hina looks back once. The shops that were shuttered in the morning are still shuttered, but there are more people in front of the two open shops than before.

Common Mistakes

• 01

  Thinking all six shops open on Sunday

  Seomun Pojang, Seonheung Office, Daedo Jimul and Daedo close every Sunday. Only Alpha Mungu and Jinyeong Pojang open on Sunday.

• 02

  Heading to Alpha Mungu first thing on a Sunday morning

  Alpha Mungu opens at 10:30 on Sunday. Before then, stop at Jinyeong Pojang, open from 07:00.

• 03

  Leaving Seonheung Office until late on a Saturday afternoon

  Seonheung Office closes at 16:00 on Saturday.

• 04

  Asking the way inside the market for a “stationery and toy street”

  the alley’s official name is Stationery Alley (문구골목). It is easiest to find as the alley with the Alpha Mungu building.

• 05

  Assuming a wholesale alley only sells in bundles

  many things can be bought singly. Count what you need before you go, and choosing is easier.

FAQ

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