At Gwangjang Market Stalls, Bottled Water Without a Price Tag Can Cost Foreigners 50% More

At a stall in Seoul's Gwangjang Market, a customer who looked Japanese picked up a bottle of water, and the vendor quoted 1,500 won. Yet the menu board taped to the stall clearly read 1,000 won. A broadcaster captured the scene on August 29 by sending a reporter disguised as a foreign tourist. A Korean customer at the very same stall was charged the listed 1,000 won. Anyone unaware that the posted price and the actual charge could differ would have walked away having overpaid 500 won — 50 percent more — without ever suspecting a thing.

At a glance: Location Gwangjang Market, 88 Changgyeonggung-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul (Exit 8, Jongno 5(o)-ga Station, Line 1; Exit 4, Euljiro 4-ga Station, Lines 2/5) / Hours Monday-Saturday 9:00-18:00 (varies by stall) / Mandatory price-labeling sector: 51 retail and food categories / Street-vendor real-name system in effect from June 2026 / To report or inquire: Seoul Dasan Call Center 120 (02-731-2120, 24 hours) or the Tourism Illegal Activity Report Center 1800-9008 (tiac.or.kr).

Opened in 1905, Gwangjang Market is Korea's oldest standing marketplace, known among foreign visitors for bindaetteok (a savory pancake made from ground mung beans) and mayak gimbap (small rice rolls with pickled radish, named "addictive" for how easy they are to keep eating). But with stalls packed tightly together and many vendors posting no price at all for individual items, cases of charging foreign tourists more than locals because they don't know the going rate have surfaced again and again. Back in April, one stall sold an unlabeled 500-milliliter bottle of water to a foreign tourist for 2,000 won, explaining the price by saying "there are a lot of foreigners here" — which sparked public criticism.

To address the problem, the city of Seoul and the Jongno-gu district office ran a comprehensive inspection of hygiene, price labeling and safety in May and June this year, covering 159 food-service businesses and 109 food stalls around Gwangjang Market. Retail stores in the 51 categories required to label the prices of manufactured goods and farm, livestock and marine products were checked intensively for compliance, with fines issued for violations. The city also runs an ongoing system of undercover "mystery shoppers," including foreign nationals, who monitor for overcharging, rudeness and unsanitary practices. Starting in June, a street-vendor real-name system requires each stall operator's name and contact information to be posted; violations accumulate penalty points, and a vendor who tops 120 points in a year or is caught four or more times can have their permit to operate on the street revoked entirely.

So the first step when buying food or water at Gwangjang Market is simply to check whether a price is posted on the stall or menu board at all. If there's no price tag, ask how much something costs before ordering, and if you're then asked for a different amount than what's shown, don't pay on the spot — photograph the menu board instead. If you do get overcharged, report the date, location, amount and any supporting photos to the Seoul Dasan Call Center at 120 or the Tourism Illegal Activity Report Center (1800-9008, tiac.or.kr). Each report adds to the penalty points under the real-name system, helping curb repeat overcharging at the same stall.