{"id":36491,"date":"2024-12-22T18:18:49","date_gmt":"2024-12-22T10:18:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=36491"},"modified":"2026-03-10T17:28:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T09:28:07","slug":"day-16-seoul-hangang-river-and-yeouido-hangang-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2024\/12\/22\/day-16-seoul-hangang-river-and-yeouido-hangang-park\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 16 @ Seoul – Hangang River and Yeouido Hangang Park"},"content":{"rendered":"

Day 16 and our final full day in Seoul before we make our way to Incheon tomorrow morning. Our initial itinerary today was for us to visit the Hangang River<\/strong> and the winter festivities in the area, including letting the kids do snow sledging. However, an announcement from the festival website updated that sledging would only be available on 24 Dec onwards in view again of the relatively warmer winter this year. Bummer: as we’d be flying back home on that date.<\/p>\n

Still, we decided to head to the river to take a look and also visit a couple of malls in the general vicinity. We’ve gone over the Han River several times now in Seoul as we went from place to place over the last week. According to the Wikipedia entry, there are only a handful of major cities in the world where a large river goes through it, essentially dividing the city into two. Seoul is one of them, and the south side of the city across the river lies the Yeouido area, where the city’s most prestigious financial and business institutions are. And it showed in our exploration of the area later in the morning after lunch: outside the malls, the district was actually fairly quiet and devoid of noisy groups of tourists dragging their luggage cases around, as we routinely saw in Myeongdong.<\/p>\n

There is a Christmas market setup in the Yeouido Hangang Park<\/strong>, but it was not operating yet so early on Sunday morning at just past 10AM. We returned to the area later in the mid-afternoon to see the market in full swing.<\/p>\n

Pictures!<\/p>\n

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We arrived at the park at around 10AM: the Christmas market was not open yet: odd, because its official website stated an opening time of 9AM.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Looking to the right of the Han River is Mapo Bridge.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Cold Sunday morning of -6 degree Celsius, but it was otherwise bright and sunny.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Seoul Tower in the distance. We didn’t go up the tower: something to do the next time we visit Seoul!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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On the left side: should be Seogang Bridge.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The Han River is about 1 km wide at its widest point.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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We returned to the area at 3PM, and found the market in full swing at this time.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The centerpiece of the market was a large covered tent with dozens of small pop-up stalls.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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We’ve got a couple of these colorful Christmas lanterns at home, but they cost a fraction of what this stall was charging!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Teddy bears!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Christmas liquor LOL.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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On the outside were a dozen food trucks offering a variety of Korean and western-styled hot snacks.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Exploring the area.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Welcoming a soon-to-arrive 2025.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We made our way towards The Hyundai Seoul shopping mall shortly, as there wasn’t much to see in the morning then. Continued in the next post!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Day 16 and our final full day in Seoul before we make our way to Incheon tomorrow morning. Our initial itinerary today was for us to visit the Hangang River and the winter festivities in the area, including letting the<\/p>\n

Read More Day 16 @ Seoul – Hangang River and Yeouido Hangang Park<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36592,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[684],"class_list":["post-36491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-traveling","tag-south-korea-2024","wpcat-17-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/blog-2024-korea-day-16-20241222_100719.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36491"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38143,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36491\/revisions\/38143"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}