Dongdaemun Design Plaza Photography Whirlwind Visit

Rand Blimes
Oct 10
2 min read

Curved concrete walkway between futuristic, dark gray tiled walls; modern architectural design with an industrial feel. No people present.

So, I had a plan. It seemed like a good plan. My wife and I would board a plane in Honolulu and fly to Incheon airport. We then had about 24 hours before we traveled on to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, so we had some time to take in Seoul. We would hop the Express Train from the airport into the city center and then check into our hotel.

Curved metallic building meets dark structure against a bright blue sky, highlighting geometric patterns and contrasting textures.

By that time, it would be night. And that meant the Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP), Seoul’s futuristic swirl of a building, would be lit up like early Christmas for abstract architecture photographers.

So, after dropping my bags at the hotel, I would jet down for a whirlwind Dongdaemun Design Plaza photography outing. Then the wife and I would grab some street food and head happily and sleepily off to the hotel for a good night’s rest.

Well, there ought to be a travel equivalent of Mike Tyson’s famous quote, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” A nine-hour flight . . . well, it can punch you in the mouth. Or lower back. Or butt.

We felt punched.

So, we staggered out into the street and got our street food dinner and then returned in ignominious defeat to the hotel room, without ever seeing the glorious, paneled curves of the DDP.

Bright yellow and orange graffiti-painted piano and a chair in a modern subway station with gray tiled walls, creating an urban vibe. — Apparently, sometimes people will sit down and play this lonely piano, a spash of color in the otherwise-gray world of the DDP. But sadly, not one was out pre-dawn the day I was there.

But happily the story didn’t end there. Because jet lag can also punch you in the mouth by waking you up at 4am. Sunrise wasn’t until almost 5:30, so my wide-awake self tramped into the darkness on a quest to see DDP lit up in the pre-dawn darkness. Redemption!

There was a metro stop right next to our hotel, so I schlepped my camera gear out into the dark streets toward the metro entrance . . .

Only to find out that Seoul’s metro doesn’t run 24 hours. It was closed.