Noryangjin Fish Market: This Post May Not Be Suitable For Vegetarians

Just across the Han River from Yongsan-gu, our home away from home, sits the futuristic glass and concrete building housing the Noryangjin Fish Market. I think it looks like a cruise ship from above, and it certainly houses enough sea life to make this a fitting image!

The old Noryangjin market was an outdoor, covered market, but in 2016 this updated, indoor version was opened. Parts of the old market still operated until very recently, but now the old market is gone and just the new building remains. It was easy to walk through the wide, well-lit aisles. We never felt crowded. I can imagine the old market felt much more chaotic than this one, and the new one is overwhelming enough! There are two large floors full of vendors selling seafood, side dishes, and even sauces, knives, and galoshes: anything you might need to buy, sell, and eat seafood.

The floors where seafood was being sold were often wet, but usually clean, and because most of the products are sold fresh the market doesn’t smell especially “fishy.” We found the vendors to be assertive, but not aggressive. Usually a smile and a “no thank you” was sufficient for us to move on, and a couple of vendors voluntarily held up their wares so Peter could get a better photo. Particularly nice since this is obviously a very competitive marketplace!

One of the largest seafood markets in South Korea, Noryangjin trades 250 to 300 tons of marine products every day! There is a wholesale auction that occurs in the wee hours of each morning, and then for the rest of the day the market sells to anyone who wants to come by and shop retail. Although most of the products are sold fresh (and often alive!), some is available frozen. There are also a number of restaurants selling deliciously fresh seafood prepared in different ways.

At this point I must warn you: this place kind of looks like an aquarium, but all of the marine life is sold to eat. In recent years, South Korea has topped the list of countries consuming the most seafood per capita in the world. If you are squeamish about eating seafood, beware the rest of this post!

I was prepared for the number of fish we saw, although I didn’t expect that so many of them would still be alive! However, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many shellfish, giant crabs, and varieties of octopus all in one place.

There was a lot of hard work going on at Noryangjin. I can’t imagine the hours, the pace, the skill, and the sheer physical labor it must take for vendors to be successful here. From catching creatures in tanks to prepping them for customers to take away, this is not a job for the faint of heart, or for the faint of limb.

You know what comes next for us – food! As we are not vegetarians and are great lovers of fresh seafood, we had to sample some of the wares. It is possible to select your own seafood and have it prepared in one of the market’s restaurants. Happily, we should be able to return another time for that adventure. This time, we headed to the Japanese-style restaurant within the market and ate what they had already selected for us!

Somehow, we still had room after that delicious course, so we opted for a little variety and headed to one of vendors selling twigim (fried food). Ordering successfully was beyond us on this one, so it was language app Papago to the rescue as we explained that we wanted to try a little of everything. Yay for technology that works – at least most of the time! I was even able to ask if I could eat the whole tiny crab. The answer: yes.

I know you want to know – the tiny crab wasn’t hard to eat at all. It was kind of like eating a crab-flavored chip! Very light and crispy. The twigim overall was similar to Japanese tempura, although we thought this was crispier and more heavily battered than the average tempura.

To close out our Noryangjin experience, we needed one last adventure. Fortified with our lunch, we headed back to the market floor to buy fresh seafood to take home. We opted for prawns as I was pretty sure I could cook those without much difficulty. Plus, I wanted to buy something live so that we could be sure it was really fresh. Not to worry about language on this one. An English-speaking vendor came over to help as soon as she heard that we wanted to buy something, and the prices were shown to us on a calculator. Not too hard!

OK vegetarians, if you’ve made it this far, thank you. But for my sake and yours please skip the next paragraphs! And if you don’t, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Our purchase made without undue stress, we headed home on the subway to cook our fresh prawns. I have to tell you, I’m not sure I could stomach the process again. Y’all – all the way home on the subway, the prawns jumped around in the plastic bag I was carrying. It gave me the giggles to watch the bag and to wonder if anyone else was noticing the package that was moving of its own accord.

When we got home, I put the prawns in the freezer for an hour to settle them down. When I took them out, I dropped them whole into boiling water. They weren’t moving as much, but they were still moving! You guys who have cooked live crabs or lobsters before are laughing at me, but I’ve never cooked anything alive before! I admit it freaked me out a little. I believe we should know where our food comes from, so… now I’m aware! A good life experience, but maybe not one I will repeat.

Though admittedly those prawns were delicious, next time I’m going to let a restaurant cook them for me!

Want more? You can see all our photos of Noryangjin Fish Market in Peter’s Flickr album.