Korea Travel Guide: Neighborhoods, Food & Places | NowHitz · 4

Time Out picked Jongno 3-ga as the world’s coolest neighbourhood for 2026. Walk past its old restaurants and tent bars into Ikseon-dong’s low hanok lanes and small shops, and the reasons start to come into view.

By day, the lanes belong to printers, lighting shops and hardware stores; after work, small bars and outdoor tables come alive. Euljiro is where a decades-old industrial district overlaps with the newer nightlife behind the nickname “Hipjiro.”

Daepyeong-dong sits on Busan Harbor, where ship repair has shaped daily life for more than a century. The name Kangkangee comes from the clang of hammers stripping rust and old paint from hulls. Today, active repair yards, public art and neighborhood culture occupy the same few streets.

After Jemulpo Port opened in 1883, foreign settlements, banks, trading houses and warehouses reshaped this district. The streets also carry traces of colonial exploitation. Today, modern-era architecture, museums, Incheon Art Platform and Jayu Park fit into one walkable old-town route.

After Gunsan Port opened in 1899, the old downtown grew around rice exports, banks, trading houses and colonial commerce. Former banks, Japanese-style houses, a temple and the old harbor remain close together; today they form a walkable ‘Time Travel Village’ for reading the city’s modern history in place.

Mullae is still a working neighborhood of metal shops and small factories. Artist studios, tiny galleries, cafés and restaurants now share the same lanes. Its appeal is not a staged “old factory” look, but the fact that industry and creative life still occupy the same blocks.

Huam-dong is a lived-in hillside between Seoul Station and Namsan, where older homes, local shops, a market and newer independent spaces share the same slopes. The 108 Steps and residential lanes reveal a Seoul shaped by everyday life rather than a polished attraction.

Along the stone wall of Donggwanwangmyo Shrine in Sungin-dong, Dongmyo Flea Market mixes vintage clothes, records, books, household goods and antiques in the same lanes. The shrine dates to 1601; secondhand merchants began gathering nearby in the 1980s, and sellers displaced by the Cheonggyecheon restoration later helped shape the market seen today.

Haenggung-dong sits inside Suwon Hwaseong Fortress, where the royal Hwaseong Haenggung Palace, city walls, markets, workshops and cafés still share one lived-in district. The reward is not simply seeing a World Heritage site, but walking through a place where the old city remains part of everyday life.