Seoul This Week: Sep 14–20 — Three Roads Stop Being Roads

The pick: Seoul Street Arts Festival, Saturday and Sunday, September 19–20

This weekend Ttukseom Hangang Park and Seoul Forest stop being places you walk through on the way somewhere. Twenty works and sixty-two performances — nine from abroad (France, Lithuania, Chile, Slovenia, Brazil) and eleven Korean — spread across the riverside and the park, 10:00 to 21:00 on both days. Everything is free. A handful of participatory programmes take advance booking through Naver and that window closes on the 16th, so if you want one, it is a today-or-tomorrow decision.

The thing to build an evening around: Giraffes, an Opera of Animals by Company Off of France. Seven red giraffes, eight metres tall, move along the river with a diva singing over them and small pyrotechnics. 19:40 to 21:00 at the football ground, both nights. It is the last thing on the timetable, and that is deliberate.

Other things worth putting a time against:

• We Want (Kta Company, France) at 17:30 by Store No. 3 — performed by around a hundred Seoul residents cast through an open call in August
• Washing Line (G.Bistaki, France) at 16:30, on the lawn beside the climbing wall
• At Seoul Forest: Pocket Juggling at the Pavilion, 14:00 and 16:00, and Musical Picnic at the outdoor stage, 15:00 and 18:30
• Under Jayang Station the booths run 10:00–21:00 all weekend — a market, play areas, a Chuseok playground. Sunday adds a kids’ EDM party at 11:30 at the waterside stage

Line 7 covers both ends: Jayang (Ttukseom Hangang Park) Station for the booths, Ttukseom Resort Station for the park. Seoul Forest Station on the Suin-Bundang Line is the other site. The festival’s own word for how to see it is art trekking — walk, cycle, or take the Han River bus between the two. Picking one spot and sitting down is the one way to do this badly.

The other road: Seoripul Music Festival, the same two days

Across the river in Seocho, 900 metres of Banpo-daero — ten lanes — close from midnight on Saturday until 04:00 on Monday. Fifty-two hours, between Seocho Station (Line 2) and the Seocho 3-dong intersection, with around forty performances on the asphalt.

Saturday. An opening parade at 13:00, then The Largest Sketchbook from 13:30 — 2,610㎡ of road, a hundred thousand pieces of chalk, and you are the one drawing on it. The Seoripul Choir Festival at 15:30. Classic Night at 18:30, with the Seocho Symphony and a string quartet of LA Philharmonic players. A jazz night after that.

Sunday. Yoga on the empty road at 07:00. Kids Classic at 11:00, local live music from 12:00, and K-POP Night at 19:00 — Crying Nut, Jaurim and Lee Seung-yoon — with fireworks after it.

Booking matters here. Classic Night, Kids Classic and K-POP Night take online reservations that open tomorrow, Tuesday the 15th, staggered through the day on Naver: 14:00, 16:00 and 18:00. Unclaimed seats go to a standby queue on the day. Everything else along the road you walk into.

Thursday opens all of it: Seoul Autumn Festa

Before the weekend there is a Thursday. On the 18th at 19:30 — a pre-show from 18:30, ninety minutes in total — the waterside stage at Ttukseom Hangang Park hosts Seoul, Dancing on the Han: traditional and contemporary dance, gugak and media art, on the river. Seat applications closed on the 6th, but the picnic zone and standing zone are open on the night, which is the part visitors tend not to find out.

That night starts Seoul Autumn Festa — 73 days, September 18 to November 29, pulling around 270 performance works from across the city into one schedule. It is why the next ten weeks are dense. Seoul Stage in Autumn runs at the Seoul Forest outdoor stage from the 18th to the 20th, so it folds straight into the weekend.

Also running

Seoul Sculpture Festival — the festival week has passed, but the sculptures stand outdoors at five sites until November 30. Free, no ticket. Ttukseom is one of the sites, so Saturday gives it to you anyway.

World Music Theatre Festival at the National Theater of Korea runs to September 26. This week: Huigyeongnu Banghoedo on the 17th and 18th, and Haenyeo Detective Hong Sherlock on the 18th and 19th. Ticketed, indoors — which matters on the day it rains.

The 16th Gwangju Biennale runs to November 15, 10:00–18:00, closed Mondays, ticketed. Inside Other Spaces at Leeum is up to November 29, and Yoo Youngkuk: A Mountain Within Me at Seoul Museum of Art is free and open to October 25.

Three guides for this week

• Seoul’s Han River parks — which park is which and how to reach each one. Ttukseom is one of them, and this weekend it is the loudest
• Seongsu-dong — it sits directly behind Seoul Forest. Walk five minutes off the festival site and you are in it
• Autumn in Seoul — where the leaves turn and when. Too early this week, exactly right in three weeks

Hidden gem: the bridge with the cars taken off

Sunday the 20th, from 14:00, Jamsu Bridge closes to cars again and the deck goes to people on foot — 1.1km from the north end across to Dalbit Plaza, with food trucks and stalls along it and a silent-disco DJ set once it is dark.

Jamsu is the lower deck of Banpo Bridge, built low enough that the river goes over it when the water rises, which is where the name comes from. Most Han River viewpoints put you beside the river; this one puts you on it, at eye level with the water.

Two notes. First, it is a short walk from the Seocho music: come down off Banpo-daero and you are there. Express Bus Terminal Station (Lines 3, 7, 9) is the nearest stop. Second, the sources disagree on how the season ends — the festival’s own site says it closes at 21:00 and finishes on October 18, the city’s listing says 22:00 and October 25. Both agree on the 14:00 start, and both agree Sunday the 20th is on.

Next week

Chuseok falls on Friday September 25, with the holiday running the 24th to the 26th. If you are travelling anywhere in Korea that week, book it now rather than after this weekend. Palaces and museums often open free over Chuseok, but the official notice is not out yet — I will not guess at it here, and I will put it in this letter the week it lands.

Already fixed: Hangawi Hanmadang at the Seoul Museum of History on Saturday the 26th, and the Naru Street Dance Festival on the 26th and 27th at Naru Art Center. Outside Seoul, the Andong Mask Dance Festival runs from the 24th to October 4 — the one worth a train if you want a holiday week that is not a city holiday week.

See you Monday. — Kibi 🐾