Namdaemun Market

Recently, we spent an afternoon shopping at Namdaemun Market in north Seoul. We'd visited the market 2 or 3 times before when we'd been looking to buy specific things and, trust me, Namdaemun is a mess- it's not the type of place that you want to look for anything in particular or you'll get frustrated. There are quite a few department stores in the market that are crammed full of vendors that have no prices on their products, and the merchandise starts to look very same-same quite quickly. We've wasted a lot of time in those stores on our previous visits and I think that's what soured us on Namdaemun. On this visit we just stuck to visiting the outdoor vendors and we had a lot of fun.

Many vendors in Namdaemun seem to make their living from selling one specialized item. The ajumma in the above photo is in the sock business. They were a dollar per pair and you could get any number of fake brand names printed on your tube socks. I bought a pair of "Louis Vittous".

The belt man.

With Halloween coming, there were a few stalls set up selling great costumes and decorations for low prices. The horse heads here were almost 10,000 Won cheaper than my supplier in Hongdae!

There were a few alleys full of gift wrap. There was certainly no shortage of selection here.

Could they have found a more suggestive looking root of ginseng to represent their store?

Namdaemun has got to be the place to buy your rip-off LV, Coach or whatever brand name bags. Mel was shopping around for one and she was quoted prices much lower than in Itaweon or Myeongdong.

There must have been a dozen identical hat stalls.

Inside one of the department stores was a basement full of international food items, but even in October it was steaming hot down there and they were selling things like unrefrigerated slices of cheese. I'm not sure how you'd feel after eating anything you bought down there!

This pile of winter jackets in a bin in the middle of the road made me sentimental for a good Frenchy's run.

We bought some Christmas presents and had fun exploring a place we thought we'd already explored well. Namdaemun Market- give it a fourth try, it's a good time.