Both HYBE Insight and SMTOWN coexartium have shut down, and the one place where a ticket can actually be bought right now is the Korea Popular Music Museum in Gyeongju, at 15,000 won for adults.

Foreign tourists still wander toward the ground-floor directory at HYBE's headquarters in Yongsan, Seoul, looking for the entrance to 'HYBE INSIGHT.' But the exhibition hall ended operations on January 15, 2023, and has not announced a reopening in nearly three years. 'SMTOWN coexartium' in Gangnam, Seoul, which opened in 2015 and was once a must-visit stop for K-pop fans, also closed its museum and store in stages after its lease expired in May 2020. Travel forums keep posting accounts of visitors who skip checking the official websites, take the subway on a whim, burn more than 60 minutes round trip, and come back empty-handed.

At a glance: The K-pop exhibition space where visitors can actually buy a ticket and walk in right now is the Korea Popular Music Museum, internationally promoted as the K-POP MUSEUM, inside the Bomun Tourist Complex in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province. According to the Korea Tourism Organization's official travel information site (visitkorea.or.kr), admission is 15,000 won for adults, 10,000 won for teenagers and 8,000 won for children, with operating hours from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed every Monday and Tuesday. The address is 9 Expo-ro, Gyeongju; from Singyeongju Station, take bus 700 and get off at the Hilton Hotel/Korea Condo stop, about a 170-meter walk away. No advance reservation is required, tickets can be bought directly at the box office, and the inquiry line is 054-776-5502.

The museum, which has been collecting popular-music materials since the 1990s, opened on April 25, 2015, and calls itself the country's first museum dedicated to popular music. Across three floors totaling 1,090 square meters, it displays roughly 70,000 records, costumes and artifacts spanning gramophone-era songs from the 1900s through trot, rock and idol K-pop, and its hands-on exhibition room lets visitors film their own dance and song videos.

From Seoul, the KTX to Singyeongju Station takes about two hours, making a day trip feasible. It is not a 10-to-20-minute subway ride away like the HYBE building in Yongsan or COEX in Gangnam, but it does meet the one condition that matters: it is a K-pop exhibition space where a ticket can actually be bought at the door. Neither HYBE INSIGHT nor SMTOWN coexartium has posted a reopening date on its official site, so travelers should recheck operating status before their trip to avoid a wasted visit.

The museum has at times temporarily cut its operating days to Friday through Sunday, so it is safer to confirm the day's hours again through the official website or by phone before visiting. Travelers wanting a guided tour or a discounted ticket can also buy admission through travel platforms such as Waug or KKday.