Gyeongju-Busan-Seoul Day 9 (Part 3) – Exploring Insadong

11 May 2012 

Insadong is a short walk away from the Bukchon Hanok Village and Anguk Station (Line #3). Insadong is a lively place with many stores and pushcarts vendors selling all sorts of Korean traditional culture and crafts. There are also numerous restaurants, cafes and street food.

It is a popular tourist destinations and hence there were many souvenir shops as well. Pushcarts vendors could be seen selling local fruits. One that caught my interest was pushcart full of yellow melons.

 

We went to the Tourist Information Center to use the washroom and get some recommendations on local Korean cuisine.  Among the options given, we decided to go for the Samgyetang or Ginseng Chicken Soup since this is local speciality and the soup is a tonic. The recommended restaurant was located on a 2nd floor shop along the Insadong 10Gil. The restaurant is called the Hwanghu or Queen’s Restaurant and we could see photos of a lady dressed in a Korean Queen’s costume on the wall once we entered the restaurant.

Samgyetang or Ginseng Chicken Soup at the Hwanghu (Queen) Restaurant. Look at the plump chicken, loaded with ginseng and other herbs and garnishes.

We ordered the standard soup although there were more expensive options that included abalone in the soup. I have never really fancy Samgyetang when I dine at Korean restaurants back home but this Samgyetang was really something. If I ever visit Insadong area again, I would be back. The restaurant even sells pre-packed ingredients for diners to buy and prepare a DYI soup at home.

Update: I did went back to look for this restaurant again in 2014 and found that the restaurant was no longer operating in Insadong. On that trip, we went to another excellent Samgyetang restaurant called the Tosokchon. For details, read here.

Energised and recharged from our tonic soup, we headed for the streets and Ssamzie-gil - the shopping and arts complex. Ssamzie-gil is easy to find along the main Insadong pedestrian-only street.

Entrance to the Ssamzie-gil with the prominent hugh yellow symbols. It’s actually the Korean letter, “sang-sheeut,” which is the first letter of Ssamzie-gil.

School seems to be out and this place looked like a popular students’ and artists’ hangout. 

Caricatures artists at work.

Students admiring the work of the artists or admiring the pretty subjects?

A gently-sloping ramp winds around the building from ground-level to roof-top deck. Along the way, there are small stores. While the wife went shopping for some gifts for the relatives back home, I made my way up the ramp till I reached the Sky Garden at the fourth level.  The high vantage point provided a nice view of the activities below and I got to work with my camera.

Sculptures of giraffes at the roof of Ssamzie-gil. I shot a silhouette photo to make this looked like Africa!

Lady preparing for some performance event at the ground floor atrium.

Some kind of “friendship” wall at the roof where messages were left.

Sculpture of sheep on the roof of a stall.

From Ssamzie-gil, we continued along Insadong street, looking for the special Starbuck cafe. This cafe is supposed to be the only one in the world with the signage “STARBUCK” written in local language and not English. 

With new logo and “Starbucks” in local language.

Next part of our walking tour after Insadong was a walk along the Cheongyecheon stream (more about that in the next post).