Dongdaemun’s Experiment in Reshaping Market Functions

Dongdaemun District is seeking to reconnect the nine traditional markets in the Cheongnyangni area and the herbal medicine market into a single visitor route, rather than treating them as scattered marketplaces. To achieve this, the district has made clear its intention to transform transaction-centered spaces into stay-oriented commercial areas by investing a total project budget of 22.443 billion won in reorganizing Cheongnyangni General Market and improving pedestrian access and guidance systems.

This plan emerged from the judgment that traditional markets alone are not enough to fully attract younger consumers and foreign visitors. The calculation is that if the roughly threefold increase in visitors to oriental medicine experience facilities can be connected to spending in nearby markets, the traditional herbal medicine commercial district can also be reinterpreted as a cultural tourism asset.

From a Daytime Wholesale District to a Nighttime Experience District

The herbal medicine market has long faced a structural limitation: while herbal ingredients are traded during the day, commercial activity drops sharply after the evening. Dongdaemun District’s attempt to fill this idle time with performances, herbal tea, medicinal herb experiences, and wellness programs is meaningful in that it creates additional demand while minimizing conflict with existing business operations.

This shift is different in character from simply expanding night markets. By emphasizing health, culture, and experiences rather than noise and alcohol-centered consumption, the district can preserve the herbal medicine market’s unique identity while also securing a distinctive edge as a tourist destination, potentially helping the oriental medicine commercial district move beyond its outdated image.

The Online Expansion of the Offline Marketplace

The reorganization of traditional markets is not limited to the streetscape and is also spreading into online distribution. As the Gyeongdong Market store enters the Hyundai H Mall Onnuri Gift Certificate exclusive section, market products known for herbal ingredients and ginseng are being transferred into a standardized purchasing experience within a large retail platform.

For merchants, this becomes a sales channel that can offset the risk of declining foot traffic, while for consumers it provides an opportunity to bring traditional market products, which had previously been difficult to access, into everyday consumption. Ultimately, it suggests that markets once centered on local specialties have now entered a stage where survival depends on designing both on-site experiences and repeat online purchases together.

A New Competitive Model for the Herbal Medicine Commercial District

The core of this trend is that the traditional oriental medicine commercial district can no longer be sustained solely through raw material trading or nostalgia-driven consumption. Pressure to diversify revenue structures by expanding physical spaces into tourism and the nighttime economy, while extending products into platform-based distribution, is simultaneously driving local policy and private-sector retail.

If this transformation takes hold, long-established commercial areas such as the herbal medicine market and Gyeongdong Market will no longer remain merely objects of preservation, but will take on new roles within the city’s consumer landscape. Conversely, if pedestrian access, hygiene, resident acceptance, and merchant participation do not support the shift, there is also a possibility that only the outward appearance will change without securing long-term sustainability.