Archives

Christmas lights in Seoul, revisited – Last weekend, we went out in the evening for what is becoming a yearly tradition: seeing the various lights and decorations put up around the city for the holiday season. We did the same thing last year, and I put up photos then as well. For today’s entry, I skipped some decorations and displays that were the same as last year and tried to showcase some new stuff.

It was a relatively warm evening, starting at around 12 degrees and slowly dropping a few degrees as the night progressed, but we bundled up because we were going to be doing a lot of walking around, and we tend to get chilly if you spend enough time outside. We took the subway to Hoehyeon Station on the #4 line to check out the display at Shinsegae (“New World”) Department Store, which is where we started last year, too. There were a number of animations that played on a loop, including some rather weird ones that I will not try to describe; this one here seemed the most like Christmas.

We then walked over to Myeongdong and saw the facade of the Lotte Department Store; I did take a similar photo last year, but the display was slightly different this year.

From there we walked down the main thoroughfare, which is lined with street food stalls and jammed with people, to Myeongdong Cathedral. We had already eaten dinner, so we didn’t sample any of the foods on offer, but we did think about maybe having street food for dinner next year. Probably not the healthiest option, but it might be interesting.

Myeongdong Cathedral is always very nice at this time of year, and to me it feels the most like Christmas—maybe because the decorations, like this shepherd watching over his flocks by night, feel more traditionally associated with the holiday. (The nativity and the wise men that I photographed last year were there as well, of course.)

From here we walked north to Cheonggyecheon, where they have a variety of lanterns and lights set up along the length of the stream closest to the palace. Many of these, as you can see by the Emart whale, are sponsored.

You can’t tell in the photo below, of course, but those butterflies actually move, slowly flapping their wings like real butterflies. For some reason, the whole thing felt a little creepy. I’m not sure why.

Under one bridge along the stream they had both ends covered and a laser show in the middle. I managed to get this shot without getting my retinas (or camera sensor) burned out by a direct hit.

Here’s a sponsorship that’s a bit more obvious. When ramyeon featured heavily in K-Pop Demon Hunters, Shin Ramyun jumped on that connection with alacrity. The funny thing is that K-Pop Demon Hunters isn’t even a Korean production. A lot of Koreans and overseas Koreans worked on it (the writer is Korean-Canadian), but it was a Western production put out by Sony. That hasn’t stopped Korea from claiming it as part of the Korean Wave—and I don’t blame them. The Korean Wave has gone global now. The question is how Korea will react when depictions of Korean culture in foreign productions start to ring a little false. (KDH doesn’t feel entirely Korean to me, but I’ve already touched on that in my review of the film.)

Next up is what I thought was easily the most mechanically impressive display on the entire stream. It is, as you might be able to tell, a peacock, and for some reason it breathes fire. The tail feathers open and close, and the wings flap up and down as well. It doesn’t make any sense, but it’s pretty cool, and I managed to capture it here mid-flame.

As with last year, a lot of the lanterns had historical themes, and this one in particular caught my eye. It is a recreation of what Cheongyecheon used to look like, back before it was covered with concrete to make an elevated highway, which is the state it was in when I first arrived in Korea. It was daylighted twenty years ago (I had to look that up—I can’t believe it’s been twenty years) to create the urban park that it is today. The lantern is honestly a bit of a romanticization of the past; before the stream was covered over in the late 1950s, it was basically an open sewer. Its current state is probably the best condition its been in for the past hundred years or so.

This is another one of those neon light works, similar to the castle above; this one depicts Seoul’s dystopian future, when Cheonggyecheon will be overrun with levitating subway cars and flying saucers, and our robot overlords will have stolen all of our babies.

From the future, we go back into the past. This was the last (or the first?) lantern display that depicted the history of the introduction of electricity to Korea; here, King Gojong is taking the first phone call in the palace (probably Sajeongjeon, based on the “Painting of the Sun and Moon and Five Peaks” behind him). This series of lanterns was honestly very cool, and probably my favorite part of the Cheonggyecheon decorations this year.

We walked down Cheonggyecheon from east to west, eventually arriving at Gwanghwamun Plaza, where the Christmas market was set up. We visited the market last year, and it looked to be pretty similar this year. If there was any difference, it was that there was a line of people waiting to get in. The line was moving pretty quickly, but we had no desire to wait any amount of time. We walked past the market, and I turned around to get a shot looking back at it; you can see the barriers set up to prevent people from trying to get in through the back.

Once past the market, we continued walking north to Gwanghwamun, the palace gate. There was a really neat light show there where they were projecting animated scenes onto the gate, accompanied by (very loud) music. We stayed and watched for a while, and we never saw the same animation twice, so apparently there were quite a few. At the end of each, there were credits for the designers—there must have been an open submission process, as designers from around the world had contributed their efforts. I took over a dozen photos of the various animations; the one here is from an animated version of the “Painting of the Sun and Moon and Five Peaks.” Some of the other animations were quite impressive, too, and overall it was the most impressive display we saw that night. It was a good way to end our tour.

And that wraps up this year’s holiday stroll around downtown Seoul. It will probably also wrap up 2025 for me here. I was thinking about maybe doing a retrospective before year’s end, but at this point I’d say chances are slim I’ll get around to it. It is possible that there might be another entry in the next few days, but I’ll play the odds and wish you a happy new year now. See you in 2026!