Jagalchi Market
South Korea'S Largest Seafood Market, On Busan'S Nampo Harbour Front · Busan, Busan
South Korea's largest seafood market, strung along the harbour front of Nampo in Busan's old port district, where fishing boats unload beside the stalls. Its name is said to come from the pebble beach that once lay here, and it grew into a market after the Korean War, when refugees crowded into the city. It is famous for the Jagalchi ajumma, the tough, fast-talking women traders who have run the stalls for generations and whose Busan-dialect slogan, oiso boiso saiso - come, look, buy - is written on the walls. The modern market building, finished in the mid-2000s with a roof shaped like seagull wings, holds a ground floor of tanks and live fish where you choose your meal by weight, and upper floors of restaurants that slice it raw or cook it for a table charge. Outside, stalls and street-side restaurants run for several blocks, selling octopus, sea squirt, abalone, eel and grilled fish, with a famous alley of spicy grilled hagfish. BIFF Square, Gukje Market and Yongdusan Park are a short walk away.
52 Jagalchihaean-ro, Jung-gu, Busan, Busan, 48953, South Korea
NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED. The typical pattern: the market runs every day from about 5 am, when boats unload and the wholesale trade starts, to about 10 pm, with the upstairs restaurants open from about 9 or 10 am and taking last raw-fish orders around 9 pm. Many stalls and the market building close on the first and third Tuesday of each month at last knowledge, and many traders close for Chuseok and Lunar New Year. Traps: arriving on a closing Tuesday; arriving after 9 pm when stalls are shuttered; festival crowds in October; the Yeongdo Bridge lifting at about 2 pm and closing the road; typhoon days closing the waterfront.