The Seoul Food Research Program

Original research on what visitors say about eating in Seoul: its traditional markets, street food and food tours.

ByIntercoper Curator Team

Travel Analysts

By the Numbers

The Pillars

Each pillar is a deep investigation into one decision visitors have to make. Supporting articles drill into specific edge cases under each pillar.

Do You Need Korean at Seoul’s Markets? 121 Reviews on Language

In 121 reviews of Gwangjang Market, Namdaemun Market and Mangwon Market, 14 say vendors spoke English and 10 say they did not. What worked instead.

Seoul Markets Without the Crush: Crowds, Kids, Toilets and Access

10.0% of Gwangjang Market reviews say it is crowded, against 4.8% at Namdaemun Market and 5.5% at Mangwon Market. Plus kids, strollers, toilets and heat.

What 1,458 Gwangjang Reviews Say the Videos Don't

Short videos say skip Gwangjang Market. The 1,458 reviews of people who went average 4.30, and the thing that ruins a visit is not the crowd.

When to Go to Seoul’s Markets: 551 Reviews on Hours and Days

When reviewers found Gwangjang Market, Namdaemun Market and Mangwon Market open or closed: nights, mornings, Sundays and holidays, in 551 reviews.

Where Locals Eat in Seoul: 3,923 Reviews of Three Markets

Mangwon Market reviews are 43% Korean-language; Gwangjang Market reviews are 8%. What 3,923 reviews of three Seoul markets show about where locals eat.

Methodology

Every article in the program follows the same protocol: source aggregation, normalization, anomaly detection across four layers, manual cross-check, and publication only when the evidence threshold is met. We document the full methodology — what we measure, how we verify, what we exclude.

The Dataset

The Seoul Food Tour Research Corpus is the evidence base behind every article in this program: public reviews, posts and comments from five sources, each tagged by topic and sentiment. A download aggregates it by topic and source, with item counts, sentiment counts and date ranges, and no review text or usernames: seoul-research.csv.

Licensed under CC BY 4.0. Temporal coverage: October 2010 – September 2026. Archived on Zenodo with DOI 10.5281/zenodo.24061337.
Dataset compiled by Mario Dalo (ORCID 0009-0003-7402-0338).