Namdaemun Market opens after dark for festival with Netflix chefs and food tours

Seoul’s Namdaemun Market will host an eight-night food festival starting Saturday, serving dishes made with ingredients from the market as the city seeks ways to draw shoppers and diners after dark.

The Seoul Moonlight Food Festival will run from 6 to 9 p.m. each night from Nov. 14 through Nov. 21, the Seoul Metropolitan Government said. It will take place mainly along a 135-meter stretch of the market beneath a roof modeled on traditional Korean eaves.

Chefs Nam Jun-young and Cho Seo-hyeong, who appeared on Netflix’s “Culinary Class Wars,” will collaborate on two dishes.

One pairs boiled pork with freshly seasoned kimchi. The other is chicken soup with hand-cut noodles topped with young hairtail, a nod to the market’s well-known spicy braised hairtail, a fish known in Korea as galchi.

Both dishes will be available throughout the festival without reservations at a venue modeled on a Joseon-era jumak, or traditional tavern.

The venue will feature traditional lanterns and hanok-style eaves.

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon will don traditional tavern attire and join the chefs in serving food at Saturday’s opening.

At least 20 Namdaemun Market merchants will set up stalls at the festival, where visitors can browse and buy goods.

Guided evening tours will take visitors to some of the market’s lesser-known eateries and specialty shops.

“Namdaemun Market is one of Seoul’s best-known attractions, with a long history and a wide variety of food,” Cho Sung-ho, a Seoul city official, said.

“We hope the festival gives visitors a new way to experience the market, with shopping by day and dining after dark, and helps bring new life to traditional markets.”

Namdaemun Market draws about 300,000 visitors a day, according to the city government.

Spending on foreign-issued cards at the market rose 65.6 percent from a year earlier in the first nine months of 2026, compared with a 48.8 percent increase across Seoul’s traditional markets.