A Different Kind of Charm From Seongsu: Bukchon Becomes a Hotspot for Brand Showrooms

Seoul's Bukchon neighborhood is emerging as the city's next major shopping destination, taking over some of the buzz that Seongsu has carried for years. Fashion, beauty, and lifestyle brands are rushing to open flagship stores in the area, turning the entire district into what industry watchers describe as a giant open-air showroom.

The two neighborhoods are starting to play different roles. If Seongsu is built for short-form content, fast, trendy, and made for social media, Bukchon is closer to long-form. Brands use the slower pace of the traditional hanok setting to tell longer stories about who they are.

Next month, Chinese toy brand Pop Mart will open a new store near Anguk Station, the entry point to Bukchon's hanok village. It joins a wave of openings from earlier this year. MLB, SETER, and Malbon Golf have all launched flagship stores in the area. Beauty, food, and home brands are moving in fast, too. Hair care label Aromatica opened a store built around an aromatherapy theme. KFC is set to open a pop-up next month. Interior platform Ohouse also chose Bukchon for its experience-focused showroom.

A few brands spotted the neighborhood's potential years earlier. Amorepacific's signature beauty brand Sulwhasoo has run "Sulwhasoo, The Place" in Bukchon since 2021. Korean fragrance house Nonfiction moved in early in 2022, opening a gallery-style flagship in a space that had operated as Arario Gallery since 2014. Adidas followed in 2024, and New Balance and Verish soon opened their own flagship stores in the neighborhood. The rush is showing up in the numbers. According to the Korea Real Estate Board, Bukchon's vacancy rate fell to 1.9 percent in the first quarter of this year, down from 4.4 percent a year earlier.

The shift reflects a longer arc in Seoul retail. Shopping energy has moved over the years from Myeong-dong, Hongdae, and Gangnam to Seongsu, Hannam, and Dosan. Now it is expanding into Bukchon. Sitting next to Gyeongbokgung Palace and the hanok village, Bukchon is one of the most distinctively Korean parts of the city. Shoppers do not just drop in and leave. They stay, walk around, and spend time.

Part of the appeal is fatigue with Seongsu, where much of the crowd is focused on getting the right photo. Brands in Bukchon are leaning into a slower rhythm, building rest areas and custom zones inside and outside their stores to keep visitors around longer. At the Adidas and MLB stores, customers can decorate shoes and clothes with beads, laces, and patches. New Balance's "Bukchon Run Hub" goes a step further, lending out running shoes and gear and guiding visitors along nearby running routes. It turns the store into a small community space.

The Bukchon boom also lines up with a sharp rise in international tourism. South Korea welcomed 4.76 million foreign visitors in the first quarter of this year, a record high for a single quarter. One industry official said global interest in Korean content is now driving demand that goes well beyond sightseeing. Visitors want to experience Korean beauty, fashion, and lifestyle in person.

Bukchon's retail strip, which flows into the nearby Samcheong-dong and Seochon areas, is seen as having room to grow. Nam Shin-gu, a director at Cushman and Wakefield Korea, compared the neighborhood's early anchors to the brand that jump-started Seongsu. "The Adidas and Tamburins stores in Bukchon are like Dior was for Seongsu," he said. He added that companies learned a hard lesson in Seongsu: miss the timing, and getting in later becomes almost impossible. That, he said, could speed up the next wave of brands moving into Bukchon.