Gwanghwamun Square
Gwanghwamun Square things to do, attractions, restaurants, events info and trip planning
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Gwanghwamun Square (๊ดํ๋ฌธ๊ด์ฅ) is a large public square located in central Seoul, South Korea, in front of Gwanghwamun Gate and Gyeongbokgung Palace. It was opened in 2009 and serves as a cultural and historical space where locals and tourists can gather and enjoy various attractions. The square is surrounded by government buildings, cultural landmarks, and is considered the heart of the cityโs historical axis. One of the main features of Gwanghwamun Square is the statue of King Sejong the Great, one of Koreaโs most respected kings. He is best known for creating the Korean alphabet, Hangul. The square also features a statue of Admiral Yi Sun-sin, a revered naval commander known for his victories against Japanese invasions during the Joseon Dynasty. Both statues are surrounded by fountains and inscriptions explaining their historical significance. The square is often the site of cultural events, exhibitions, and public gatherings. It is a popular spot for tourists, not only because of its proximity to Gyeongbokgung Palace, but also for the surrounding museums, such as the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts and the nearby National Palace Museum of Korea. Visitors can enjoy the square both during the day and at night, as it is beautifully lit in the evening. There is also an underground exhibition area called the "Seoul Hall of History" which offers further insights into Korea's past. The square is easily accessible by public transportation, with Gwanghwamun Station located directly beneath it, making it a convenient stop for those exploring Seoulโs historical and cultural sites. The area around the square offers cafes, restaurants, and shopping options, providing a chance to rest or explore further after visiting the historical landmarks. It's recommended to check for any events or demonstrations that might be taking place, as the square is often used for public rallies and gatherings, which could affect your visit.
RR
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The "2024 Gwanghwamun Christmas Market," held in Gwanghwamun Square, is a major year-end event that runs from December 13, 2024, to January 5, 2025, in conjunction with the Seoul Lantern Festival. Event Overview: Dates: December 13, 2024 - January 5, 2025 Location: Gwanghwamun Square, 175 Sejong-daero, Jongno-gu, Seoul Operating Hours: Daily from 11:00 AM to 10:00 PM Admission: Free Main Programs: Santa Village: Experience various activities and photo zones with Santa Claus. Food Trucks: Enjoy warm winter food from a variety of food trucks. Handmade Crafts & Winter Goods: Local small businesses will sell handmade items and winter goods. Additional Information: Parking: Limited parking spaces around Gwanghwamun Square, so public transport is recommended. Transportation: Gwanghwamun Station (Line 5), Exit 9, is about a 5-minute walk. For more detailed information and updates, please check the official website. If you want to get a glimpse of the event atmosphere, you can watch the following video: 2024 Gwanghwamun Christmas Market Video
jh sonjh son
00
It is the center of Seoul, Korea's capital, and a major tourist destination. So it is a noisy square where people who always express themselves in the opinion of pleasant, angry or sad reasons. You can also have fun with various cultural events. There are also flea markets and international cultural events. On September 1, at the Gwanghwamun Square, 'National Paralympic Sports Competition promotion festival' and 'The Vietnamese Cultural Festival' were in progress. There was Vietnam's representative food experience booth (sugarcane juice, half American) booth. There was also a fashion show on the stage in front of the booth. The charismatic eyes, gait and costumes of the participating models stood out. As the weather is clear, I walk slowly down Gwanghwamun Square, It was just nice to see a lot of Koreans and foreigners coming together to enjoy cultural events and children playing in the bottom fountain. I just want to be filled with peace and tranquility. ----------------------------------------- ๋ํ๋ฏผ๊ตญ ์๋ ์์ธ์ ์ค์ฌ์ด๊ณ ์ฃผ์๊ด๊ด์ง์ด๋ฉฐ, ๊ตญ๋ฏผ๋ค์ ์์ ์์ฌ๋ฐ์ธ๋์ด๊ธฐ๋ ํ๋ค. ๊ทธ๋์ ํญ์ ์ฆ๊ฒ๊ฑฐ๋, ๋ถ๋ ธํ๊ฑฐ๋, ์ฌํ ์ด์ ๋ฑ์ ์๊ฒฌ์ผ๋ก ํ์ถํ๋ ์ฌ๋๋ค์ด ๋ชจ์ฌ์ ์๋๋ฌ์ด ๊ด์ฅ์ด๋ค. ๋ํ, ๋ค์ํ ๋ฌธํํ์ฌ๋ก ์ฆ๊ฑฐ์ด ์ฒดํ๋ ํ ์ ์๋ค. ์๊ธฐ๋ณ๋ก ๋ฒผ๋ฃฉ์์ฅ๊ณผ ๊ตญ์ ๋ฌธํํ์ฌ๋ ํ๋๋ฐ, 9์1์ผ์๋ ๊ดํ๋ฌธ ๊ด์ฅ์์ '์ ๊ตญ ์ฅ์ ์ธ ์ฒด์ก๋ํ' ํ๋ณดํ์ฌ์ ๋ฒ ํธ๋จ๋ฌธํ์ถ์ ๊ฐ ์งํ๋๊ณ ์์๋ค. ๋ฒ ํธ๋จ์ ๋ํ์ ์ธ ์๋ฏผ ์์ ์ฒดํ(์ฌํ์์ ์ฃผ์ค, ๋ฐ๋ฏธ)๋ถ์ค๊ฐ ์์๋๋ฐ, ํ๊ธ์ผ๋ก๋ง ์ด์ฉํ ์ ์์ด์ ์์ฌ์๋ค. ๋ํ, ๋ถ์ค ์์ ์ค์น๋ ๋ฌด๋ ์์์๋ ํจ์ ์ผ๋ ์งํ๋๊ณ ์์๋ค. ํจ์ ์ผ ์ฐธ๊ฐ ๋ชจ๋ธ๋ค์ ์นด๋ฆฌ์ค๋ง ์๋ ๋๋น๊ณผ ๊ฑธ์๊ฑธ์ด, ์์์ด ๋๋ณด์๋ค. ๋ ์จ๊ฐ ์พ์ฒญํ์ฌ ๊ดํ๋ฌธ ๊ด์ฅ์ ์ฒ์ฒํ ๊ฑธ์ผ๋ฉด์, ๋ง์ ํ๊ตญ์ธ๋ค๊ณผ ์ธ๊ตญ์ธ๋ค์ด ํจ๊ป ์ด์ฐ๋ฌ์ ธ ๋ฌธํํ์ฌ๋ฅผ ์ฆ๊ธฐ๋ ๋ชจ์ต๊ณผ ๋ฐ๋ฅ ๋ถ์์์ ๋ฌผ๋์ดํ๋ ์ด๋ฆฐ์ด๋ค์ ๋ชจ์ต ๋ฑ์ ํ์จํ ๊ด๊ฒฝ์ ๋ณด๋, ๊ทธ์ ์ข์๋ค. ํํ์ ํ์จํจ์ด ๊ฐ๋ํ๊ธธ ๋ฐ๋ ๋ฟ์ด๋ค.
Jasmin LeeJasmin Lee
00
Gwanghwamun Square is a large public space situated in the middle of Sejong-ro, just south of Gyeongbokgung Palace . The plaza is 34 metres wide and over 500 meters wide and includes a few interesting things to see. Here you find large scale monuments to beloved King Sejong the Great and Admiral Yi Sun-Sin, both important historical figures in Korean history. The statues are facing the south, providing a nice photo ops in front of Gwanghwamun Gate and the palace in the background. Another interesting attraction which can be accessed from Gwanghwmun Square is the underground 'The Story of King Sejong and The Story of Admiral Yi Sun-Sin'. This is a combined collection of learning displays and information, a very helpful attraction for those who wish to learn more about these two great men. Overall, they have done a nice job with Gwanghwamun Square. History buffs will appreciate the attractions here and others will find it worth a quick stop before or after visits to Gyeongbokgung when spending time in this area of Seoul.
BradBrad
00
Took the Subway to this square and had the chance to walk around all day on a nice Sunday in April. Since the US-Embassy is located next to the square there are different organisations who like to demonstrate along this road. On this particular day I was lucky to walk by at least five of those demonstrations. But regardless of the people standing around and holding banners, this place is very cool. If you enjoy the big monuments and old buildings as well as the art and some museums this is the right place. Lots of Photo-Opportunities and quite a bit to see. You can walk around and on both sides the several line road will go by. From this square you can walk down to the city hall (must see) and the old palace. There are many things to look at and if you are ever in Seoul make sure to take a day or two to look at this area. For all the coffee lovers out there, of course Starbucks or other coffee shops have a store close by and you will be able to enjoy your favorit drink:).
hansi Maronhansi Maron
10
Just for the Square it might not be worth a visit, except there are some special happenings on the square. Or when there is special illumination at night. But if you link it with your visit to the Palace and / or Insadong then it's surely worth a look. It's a really massive Square. With the statue of the Admiral Yi Sun-sin a bit to the south and the Statue of King Sejong sitting prominently in the middle of the square, greeting all the visitors. Talking about visitors: There were surprisingly few on the weekday afternoon. Which was good for the photos. And there are quite some photo ops, especially with the King Statue and / or the Palace in the back. Underneath the Square there is a small exhibition hall and museum about the two historical figures depicted the statues. And on the east side there's also the US Embassy with massive security. So, in the end it's just a square, there's not much to do. But come have a look anyways before or after visiting the Palace.
Alex HaasAlex Haas
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Nearby Attractions Of Gwanghwamun Square
Gyeongbokgung Palace
Deoksugung Palace
LOTTE Department Store Main Store
Insa-dong Culture Street
Cheonggyecheon
LOTTE HOTEL SEOUL
Cheonggye Plaza
Jogyesa Temple
Sejong Center for the Performing Arts
Sejong Center

Gyeongbokgung Palace
4.6
(15.4K)Click for details

Deoksugung Palace
4.6
(7.8K)Click for details

LOTTE Department Store Main Store
4.2
(5.1K)Click for details

Insa-dong Culture Street
4.3
(5.4K)Click for details
Nearby Restaurants Of Gwanghwamun Square
Tosokchon Samgyetang
Mugyo-dong Bugeo-guk
Cheongjinok
Mijin
MidoGalbi
Hwangsaengga Kalguksu
Heavy Steak Jongno-gu office
Imun Seolnongtang
Starbucks Reserve The Jongno
Urban Garden

Tosokchon Samgyetang
4.2
(4.6K)Click for details

Mugyo-dong Bugeo-guk
4.5
(1.6K)Click for details

Cheongjinok
3.9
(1.8K)Click for details

Mijin
4.1
(1.6K)Click for details
Basic Info
Address
172 Sejong-daero, Jongno District, Seoul, South Korea
Map
Phone
+82 2-2133-7732
Call
Website
gwanghwamun.seoul.go.kr
Visit
Reviews
Overview
4.4
(5.5K reviews)
Ratings & Description
cultural
outdoor
accessibility
Description
Gwanghwamun Square is a public square on Sejongno, Jongno-gu, Seoul, South Korea. Serving as a public space and at times road for centuries of Korean history, it also historically significant as the ...
attractions: Gyeongbokgung Palace, Deoksugung Palace, LOTTE Department Store Main Store, Insa-dong Culture Street, Cheonggyecheon, LOTTE HOTEL SEOUL, Cheonggye Plaza, Jogyesa Temple, Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, Sejong Center, restaurants: Tosokchon Samgyetang, Mugyo-dong Bugeo-guk, Cheongjinok, Mijin, MidoGalbi, Hwangsaengga Kalguksu, Heavy Steak Jongno-gu office, Imun Seolnongtang, Starbucks Reserve The Jongno, Urban Garden

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