Namdaemun Market (Korean: 남대문시장) is a large traditional market in Seoul, South Korea. It is located next to Namdaemun, the main southern gate to the old city.[1] The market is among the oldest extant markets in Korea, having opened during the Joseon period in 1414.
There has been a market in the general area around Namdaemun for centuries. After a series of invasions between the late 16th and mid 17th centuries, the Koreanic state Joseon maintained a policy of strict isolationism. The market was thus limited to mostly Korean customers and merchants for centuries. However, the character of the market began to change drastically when the Empire of Japan forcefully opened Korea in the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1876. Afterwards, nearly half of the merchants became either ethnic Chinese or Japanese merchants. The market survived a number of attempts by the Japanese colonial government to shut it down. It was destroyed a number of times in the 20th century by accidental fires and during the 1950–1953 Korean War. Each time the market was destroyed, it was nearly completely rebuilt from scratch to the roughly the same size and status it had previously operated under.
Today the market has been modernized, although it retains much of its bustling character. It is also largely jointly owned by a collective of the merchants who operate within it. According to the Seoul Institute, it contained 5,200 stores, had 9,090 workers, and had an area of 64,612 m2 (695,480 sq ft) as of 2016.[2]
