For a long time, 63 Building was what came to mind when I heard “Yeouido.”
Then The Hyundai Seoul opened, and suddenly Yeouido had a completely different reason to visit.
And then there’s the Han River, sitting right next to all of it.
Yeouido has changed quite a bit, but somehow the old landmark, the new shopping mall, and the river all still fit together.
The 63 Building — Yeouido’s Original Landmark, Just Reopened
Long before The Hyundai Seoul became Yeouido’s big attraction, there was the 63 Building. Its aquarium and observation deck used to be enough of a draw that opening day alone pulled in 30,000 visitors, and by its fourth year it had logged nearly 20 million total. The aquarium closed for good in mid-2024 after 39 years, and that space now houses a Korean branch of the Pompidou Center. The observation deck sat closed for 16 years before finally reopening this past June as 63 Sky Picnic — a fully open-air rooftop, no glass in the way, looking straight out over the Han River and the rest of the skyline.
IFC Mall — The Original Mall Anchor
IFC is the older, more practical side of Yeouido shopping. It’s where you go when you actually need something — clothes, cosmetics, lunch, a movie — rather than when you want to spend three hours wandering around a department store.
The Hyundai Seoul — The One Everyone’s Actually Talking About
The Hyundai Seoul opened in 2021, about 500 meters past IFC Mall, and it’s now Seoul’s single largest department store by floor space — but the size isn’t really why people go. Walk in and it doesn’t look like a department store at all: a 12-meter indoor waterfall, a 1,000-pyeong indoor forest called Sound Forest with real grass and dozens of trees, and a glass ceiling that lets natural light reach every floor. Roughly half the entire building is given over to space for just sitting around rather than shopping.
The other reason people keep coming back is pop-ups. The Hyundai Seoul runs something like 450 of them a year — everything from K-pop merch drops to film promotions to fashion collabs, with one idol pop-up reportedly pulling in ₩3.8 billion in two weeks. It’s become known as something close to Korea’s pop-up capital, and it hit ₩1 trillion in annual sales faster than any department store in the country’s history, without even carrying Hermès, Louis Vuitton, or Chanel.
Christmas is where it gets especially competitive. Every December, Seoul’s major department stores go all-in on tree displays and holiday decor — but The Hyundai Seoul’s version, a full storybook village built out in Sound Forest each year, tends to be the one people actually travel across the city to see and photograph.
Yeouido Hangang Park — The Walk Outside
Yeouinaru Station, one stop from Yeouido Station on Line 5, sits right at the edge of Yeouido Hangang Park — you come up the stairs and the river’s already in front of you. In spring, the riverside road here becomes Yunjungno, a 1.7-kilometer cherry blossom street lined with roughly 1,800 trees, lit up in the evening during the annual festival in early April.
The rest of the year, it’s still a genuine hangout, and a low-effort one — mats, wet wipes, and pretty much anything else you’d want are all sold right there, so you can show up with literally nothing and still have a proper picnic. Delivery apps reach the park too, if you’d rather have food brought to your spot on the grass.
For something on the water, Eland Cruise runs out of a terminal near Yeouinaru Station, with a few different trip types depending on mood — I did the one with a live jazz performance on board, heading out toward Seongsan Bridge and back, for around ₩25,000 on a 2pm sailing, and it was a genuinely nice couple of hours. The Han River Bus (한강버스) is the newer, cheaper option — a proper water taxi with a stop at Yeouido — but it’s gotten popular enough that weekends mean real crowds and possible waits, so a weekday ride is the easier one if your schedule allows it.
You could spend a day in Yeouido without ever running out of things to do: go up 63 Sky Picnic for the view, spend the afternoon at IFC or The Hyundai Seoul, then head down to the river for a walk, a cruise, or just a beer on the grass as the sun sets.
That’s probably what makes Yeouido worth a visit. It’s still one of Seoul’s main business districts, but you don’t have to be there for business. You can just show up and make a whole day out of it.
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