The Hyundai Seoul Feels Like a Small City

An Indoor Garden That Feels Outdoors

The most striking space at The Hyundai Seoul is on the fifth floor. The indoor garden, known as Sounds Forest, has real trees, soil and walking paths beneath a high ceiling. It feels remarkably like a park.

A mall’s usual seating area offers a bench where you can check your phone or decide where to go next. People linger in this garden. They walk around, take photographs, talk or sit with nothing particular to do.

The effect is especially noticeable after dark, when the light under the glass roof mingles with the garden’s own lighting. There’s no wind and the paths stay dry. You still get a sense of the season.

Walking along the garden paths, it’s easy to imagine the stores were built around a park.

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A Different Kind of Souvenir

One fifth-floor shop sells a kind of souvenir I hadn’t expected. Alongside the walking paths were keyboards and keycaps based on dancheong, the colorful painted decoration found on traditional Korean buildings. Here was a Korean design on something you could use every day.

The colors can take a moment to get used to. Seeing them on a keyboard, though, feels surprisingly natural. A visitor from overseas might buy it to remember a trip. Someone who lives in Korea might simply like the design. Either way, it’s an object that brings the memory back each time you use it.

It’s a small example of what the department store does well. The shop takes a piece of traditional design and imagines where it might fit into everyday life. Even if you buy nothing, you get to see the idea at work.

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A Building Made for Wandering

It’s easy to lose your bearings a little. In a typical department store, brands are grouped by floor and you move up and down around the same escalators. Here, the experience is closer to walking through a series of adjoining districts.

A passage opens suddenly into a wide space. Then the route narrows, and another plaza comes into view. The layout makes it easy to turn a corner on a whim.

It’s a good place for a walk. Plenty of people make a circuit without buying anything. Seeing the building is a reason to visit in itself.

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Downstairs, a Busier Street

On B2, the mood changes. Where the upper floor feels like a park, the basement feels like a crowded street. Temporary shops come and go, so the mix can be different the next time you visit.

Experimental labels and brands that began online show up alongside more familiar names. Seeing what those brands do in a physical space is part of the draw.

Long lines outside individual shops are common. People queue for a chance to see something that’s having a moment. A pop-up often works as a small exhibition as much as a store.

It’s a far cry from the old department-store basement built around groceries. B2 has become a place to see what people are interested in right now.

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Dinner in the Middle of a Visit

On B1, the dining area feels like a cluster of small restaurants in a market. The seats are reasonably spread out and the lighting is easy on the eyes. It’s somewhere you can stay for a while.

The choices go well beyond the usual food-court line-up of tonkatsu, ramen and udon. Each counter has a distinct character, and you can settle in for a meal or stop for a drink and dessert.

A meal can fall halfway through a visit. You go downstairs to eat, then look around some more or go back to the garden. The dining floor makes it easier to spend the better part of a day here.

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Why It’s Easy to Lose Track of Time

I generally get tired after a while in a shopping center. At The Hyundai Seoul it took longer than I expected.

Part of it is the change in scale. The walk alternates between broad, open spaces and narrower ones, so there’s always something different in view. Places to sit break up the shops.

It also feels possible to come without a plan. You can have a coffee, take a walk and look around without feeling as though you need to buy something to justify the trip.

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What a Department Store Can Be

Shopping is still part of the visit, but the building gives you other things to do. Its spaces are among the reasons people come.

An older department store might bring particular brands to mind. Here I remember the light in the garden, the width of a passage and the crowd around a pop-up before I remember a shop name.

That’s what makes it feel like a small city. A few minutes on foot take you from one atmosphere to another.

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Why People Come Back

The appeal doesn’t depend on a single event. Pop-ups turn over, and the spaces feel different with the seasons.

That makes it somewhere to revisit, even on a day when you don’t have anything to buy.

It was the clearest example I’d seen of a department store making room for the time people spend there.

When I think back on it, I remember where I stopped.

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