Visit korea & Seoul city tour

To international visitors, Myeongdong is a stunning shopping district with countless shops and restaurants. The air is abuzz with the mix of foreign languages as shopkeepers and international tourists negotiate prices in English, Japanese, and more.

Many brand name shops, department stores, vendors, and restaurants line the streets and alleys. Common products for sale include clothes, shoes, and accessories and unlike Namdaemun or Dongdaemun, many designer brands are sold in Myeongdong. In addition, several major department stores include Lotte Department Store, Shinsegae Department Store, Myeongdong Migliore, Noon Square, and M Plaza which are the most popular places of visit. The department stores carry many premium labels and other fashionable goods at reasonable prices that are satisfactory to all types of shoppers.

For people who love mall shopping and following the latest trends, the eye-catching glass exterior of M Plaza draws in passers-by to its big-name stores including Spanish fashion chain, ZARA and Forever 21. On the 5th floor is Haechi Hall, a performance space where you can catch a concert or a musical and M Plaza is also home to the Seoul Culture and Tourism Center.

Active types wear are specialized in Noon Square which has sports and casual wear shops as well as having a cinema and seafood restaurant.

Myeongdong is full of beauty outlets. Every Korean cosmetic brand has a branch in Myeongdong. The market is home to roughly a thousand cosmetic shops and hundreds of skin-care stores, with several large cosmetic shops clustered around the central street (Jungang-gil) and Myeongdong Theater. Sales associates usually can speak a few foreigner languages (to some degree), which makes for a pleasant shopping experience for international visitors who don’t speak Korean. For the added convenience of international shoppers, many fliers are written in other languages as well.

TODACOSA is a cosmetics chain stocking a wide range of brands and is Korea’s first large specialized cosmetics store. Since opening in 2000, TODACOSA has prided itself on unprecedented levels of service, allowing customers to sample any product before purchasing and offering a special make-up corner to test foundations, eyeliners, lipsticks, et cetera.

Olive Young, which opened in 1999, is a health and beauty concept store stocking product lines ranging from cosmetics to health foods and has proved popular with women of all ages. Myeongdong is also home to several Korean big-brand shops including The Face Shop, Etude and Missha which draw in many overseas visitors too.

Myeongdong Tourism Information Center is located at the Myeongdong Jungang-ro Intersection, this information center employs two guides who can provide assistance to visitors in English, Japanese, and Chinese. As an added convenience, there are a number of multi-lingual guides free-floating around the Myeongdong area, ready and willing to assist tourists. Just look for people wearing red vests marked with an ‘ⓘ’ information logo.

Hours: 09:00-22:00 (summer hours), 09:00-21:00 (winter hours) (Open all year-round, including holidays)
Contact: +82-2-774-3238

Myeongdong Festival has been hosted since 1982 to vitalize the commercial area and encourage tourism. It is usually held twice a year: from the end of March to the middle of April in spring, and the month of September in autumn. Parades, music and dance performances, fashion shows and other spectacles are part of the festivities. Many shops and stores offer product sales and discounts during this time as well. In 2012, the area hosted the street parade of the Cheonan World Dance Festival in October.

Myeongdong is very popular with international visitors and fills with Japanese tourists during the Japanese holiday period known as “Golden Week” which runs from the end of April to the beginning of May. Part of Myeongdong’s popularity stems from the more affordable prices here compared to Apgujeongdong and Cheongdamdong.