No – Ryang – Jin Fish Market, Seoul South Korea

The NoRyangJin fish market.

What’s there to say about one of the largest fish markets I have ever seen?  Well it was definitely a fun experience.  Myself and another Canadian friend had gone searching for this place the previous day but ended up taking a left when we should of taken a right.  That is to say we ended up walking in the wrong direction.

That’s one of the nice things about having a good travel companion or friend; getting lost is no big deal.  He was biking across South Korea and had to leave the following morning and we made tentative plans to meet up again in Japan.

I took the metro to Noryangjin the following afternoon and this time took the correct bridge over the street, onto a roof parking lot and down the stairs to the market itself.  It’s very easy to get the impression you’re going in the wrong direction when attempting to find the market.  Here’s a few shots from the second floor overlooking part of the market and the stairwell down to it:

Another few shots from the second floor overlooking some of the stalls that were nearest to me (a few things of note in these pics; check out the huge mussels and the heart shaped seafood.  I have no idea what they are called but up close they really look like a human heart!):

I didn’t take to many pictures of the actual fish stalls because they were mostly all the same.  The only thing that varied was the different types of fish!  I saw so many species that I simply didn’t recognize.  Some specialized in every type of crab you can imagine, others in shellfish and several had aquariums with live fish stacked upon themselves.

I guess all the real action happens early in the morning when the local shop owners come in to buy their daily stock.  This place runs 24 hours a day.  Here’s a few pics of some lobster (I didn’t ask the price but i’m told it’s very expensive.  I only saw a few stalls with lobsters so I’m guessing this is true).  If you look closely you can see the “human like” seafood I mentioned previously in the lobster picture.

 For whatever reason it’s at the Noryangjin fish market that my tattoo got the largest attention.  I had one guy point in disgust and smile at the same time when I used the Korean word for “I like” pointing at my tattoo. I had several stall owners whispering to each other and pointing while others gave me a smile and said that they really liked it (either a thumbs up or using English “beautiful” etc).

However the funniest for me had to be when I was getting ready to leave the fish market.  I was getting ready to take the stairs up to the roof top parking lot when one of the fish mongrels stopped me, pointed at my arm and said “American?”.   I answered Canadian, pointed to the fish on my tattoo at which point he started screaming (really screaming) “MAFIA! MAFIA!”.  At first I laughed it off but when he kept screaming it while walking away I was a little more concerned and simply kept walking.

The whole thing made me smile.  On my way up a different set of stairs I noticed that they had a scale setup for public use.  Some things are universal and when buying a product based on weight, people want to make sure they are getting what they paid for: