Gwanghwamun Square Underground: 3 Free Museums in One Basement

What is under Gwanghwamun Square?

The Gwanghwamun Square underground is not just a passage to the subway. It is three free museums strung along one basement corridor, and you can walk the whole thing without going back above ground.

Everyone photographs the two statues on Gwanghwamun Square. Almost nobody walks down the stairs underneath them.

I have lived in Seoul for years and I had walked past that entrance a hundred times before I finally went down. What is under there is not a subway passage. It is a genuine museum floor that runs the length of the square and keeps going under the Sejong Center, and by the end of it you have crossed about three hundred metres entirely indoors. We went at the end of September 2026, on an afternoon that was still warm enough for the fountains outside to be running.

Bronze canopy over the stairway entrance to The Story of King Sejong on Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul — *The entrance on the square itself. That bronze canopy is a replica of the top of a Joseon-era royal seal box, and the stairs under it go straight down into the museum.*

Red pillared gateway marking the entrance to The Story of King Sejong in the underground corridor beneath Gwanghwamun Square — *The corridor at the bottom of the stairs. Two of these halls are named in Hangul only, which tells you something about who the designers expected.*

Quick Info

Gwanghwamun Square undergroun	Details
What it is	Three connected free exhibition halls under Gwanghwamun Square
Address	175 Sejong-daero, Jongno-gu, Seoul (B2)
Admission	Free — all three halls
Reservation	Not required for any of them
Sejong & Yi hours	10:00–18:30, last entry 18:00. Closed Mondays
Freedom Hall hours	Mon–Thu 10:00–22:00, Fri–Sun 10:00–23:00
Nearest station	Gwanghwamun Station, Line 5, Exit 9
Phone	+82-2-399-1177 (Sejong & Yi halls)
Last checked	October 2026

The hours are the single most useful thing on this page, so read them twice. The two history halls shut at 6:30 PM. Freedom Hall runs until 10 PM on weekdays and 11 PM at weekends, and it does not close on Mondays. Turn up at seven in the evening and you will find two thirds of this basement locked and one third wide open.

One note on the Monday closure: if a Monday falls on a public holiday, the Sejong and Yi halls open as normal and close the following weekday instead.

The Story of King Sejong

The first hall is about the king who invented Hangul, and it leans hard into the alphabet rather than the biography.

Stone wall carved with the preface to the Hunminjeongeum at The Story of King Sejong, Gwanghwamun Square — *Consonants and vowels pulled off the page and mounted as objects. My kids worked out that the shapes were letters before I had finished reading the panel.*

There is a working replica of the water clock, a section on the rain gauge, and the usual run of astronomical instruments. The displays are solid rather than spectacular. If you only have an hour in this basement, this is the hall to move through briskly.

A detour to Dokdo

Tucked in between the two main halls is the Dokdo Experience Center, a small separate exhibition about the islets in the East Sea.

Young child looking at a live video feed of the Dokdo islets on a display wall at the Dokdo Experience Center, Gwanghwamun — *A live feed from Dokdo, running on a loop. My daughter stopped dead in front of it — moving water on a screen will beat a museum caption every time.*

I will say plainly that the territorial dispute behind this room is a live political issue between Korea and Japan, and this exhibition presents the Korean position. You can take it as you find it. As a stop with a small child, it works because of that live camera.

The Story of Admiral Yi Sunshin

This is where the basement suddenly gets good.

Full-scale replica panokseon warship bow with carved dragon head inside The Story of Admiral Yi Sunshin, Gwanghwamun — *A full-scale panokseon bow with the dragon head mounted on the prow. It fills the room, and you can walk right up to the hull.*

Interior of the panokseon replica showing rows of wooden cannons along both sides of the gun deck — *A full-scale panokseon bow with the dragon head mounted on the prow. It fills the room, and you can walk right up to the hull.*

A full-size warship inside a basement is a genuinely strange thing to come across under a city square. The scale lands immediately, even for someone who has no idea what the Imjin War was.

Floor model of the Battle of Hansan showing miniature ships in crane-wing formation under a projected sea at The Story of Admiral Yi Sunshin — *he Battle of Hansan, laid out as a floor of model ships under a projected sea. The Korean fleet is the curve across the middle — the crane-wing formation.*

English narration subtitle projected above the Battle of Hansan model explaining the Gyeonnaeryang strait tactics — *he Battle of Hansan, laid out as a floor of model ships under a projected sea. The Korean fleet is the curve across the middle — the crane-wing formation.*

That second photo is the detail worth knowing about. The battle projection is narrated in English, which is more than most Korean municipal exhibitions manage. You can stand there for the whole cycle and follow the tactics without a word of Korean.

[사진 10 — q8PRJrhK] gwanghwamun-admiral-yi-naval-battle-map.jpg Alt: Wall map of the southern Korean coast marked with bilingual labels for each naval battle of the Imjin War Caption: Every naval engagement of the Imjin War, pinned to an old map of the southern coast. Each label is bilingual.

There are two hands-on corners too, and both were free when we visited.

Panokseon ship assembly activity station with illustrated instructions at The Story of Admiral Yi Sunshin — *A panokseon assembly table. The instructions are illustrated, which is the only reason my son managed it without me.*

Calligraphy Experience Zone sign above desks with brushes and visitors' written sheets displayed on the wall behind_1 — *The calligraphy corner, with other visitors’ attempts pinned along the wall. Brushes, ink and paper are laid out and you simply sit down.*

Wall of brush-written Hangul name cards at the free calligraphy experience in the King Sejong Story exhibition — *The calligraphy corner, with other visitors’ attempts pinned along the wall. Brushes, ink and paper are laid out and you simply sit down.*

Freedom Hall and the Garden of Gratitude

Keep walking and the floor changes. The wood and bronze stop, and you come out into a dark stone hall.

Dark stone lobby and staircase at the entrance to Freedom Hall beneath Gwanghwamun Square, with a Korean War photograph projected on the wall — *The Freedom Hall entrance. This is the newest part of the basement, and it connects to the Admiral Yi hall along the same underground route.*

This is the underground half of the Garden of Gratitude, built to honour the twenty-two nations that supported South Korea during the Korean War. Above ground on the square there are twenty-three stone pillars, each 6.25 metres tall — twenty-two allies plus Korea. The number is the date: the war began on 25 June. Seven of those countries have since donated stone from home to be set into their own pillar.

Wall reading Freedom, Sacrifice, Gratitude and Peace in Korean and English beside illuminated LED national pillars in Freedom Hall — *The four words the hall is built around, in Korean and English, with the illuminated national pillars running down the left.*

Row of illuminated LED pillars in Freedom Hall, each showing the flag and name of a nation that supported South Korea in the Korean War — Belgium, Greece, India, South Africa, Thailand, Türkiye, Sweden, the Philippines, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, France, the Netherlands, the UK, the US. Fifteen of the twenty-two visible in one frame.

Here is the thing that makes this hall worth the walk for an English-speaking visitor, and I have not seen it mentioned anywhere else. Each pillar is written in that country’s own language. The Greek pillar is in Greek. The Indian pillar is in Hindi. The South African one is in English.

Sixteen nations sent combat troops — the US, UK, Canada, Türkiye, Australia, the Philippines, Thailand, the Netherlands, Colombia, Greece, New Zealand, Ethiopia, Belgium, France, South Africa and Luxembourg. Six sent medical support: Sweden, India, Denmark, Norway, Italy and Germany.

Find yours and read it in your own language. That is a small thing and it is also the whole point of the room.

Memorial wall in Freedom Hall with columns of names on dark panels either side of a large media screen showing a flower garden — The memorial wall, with names in columns either side of the media screen. When we visited in late September the panels carried American war dead and missing; the hall rotates its media content, so what is running may differ on your visit.

pherical LED display and touchscreen panel with a language button in Freedom Hall, showing national data for South Korea — *The interactive globe. The panel beside it has a “Lang” button, so the country data runs in English as well as Korean.*

There are four media walls down here and thirteen pieces of content across them. Everything we tried was self-guided and bilingual. There is a docent programme — twelve sessions a day, forty minutes each, twenty people per session, booked through the Seoul public reservation service — but you do not need it to get in. Walk-in viewing is free and unrestricted, and the official page says so explicitly.

Above ground, the twenty-three pillars are lit from 8 PM until midnight.

Honest notes on language

The Admiral Yi battle projection and the Freedom Hall media walls are properly bilingual. The King Sejong hall is weaker — plenty of panels carry English, but the interactive stations are mostly Korean. The Dokdo room is Korean-first.

So: two thirds of this basement works in English, and the newest third works best.

Why this matters in December

Gwanghwamun Square in winter is brutal. It is wide, it is flat, and the wind comes straight down Sejong-daero with nothing to stop it.

The Gwanghwamun Christmas Market runs on this square from 5:30 PM. The two history halls will already be closing by then — but Freedom Hall is open until 10 PM, and it is directly underneath. If you are standing in that market with a cold child, the warmest room within fifty metres is down the stairs, it is free, and it has four glowing walls to look at.

Market, then the lit pillars at eight, then downstairs to warm up. That is an evening.

*The square in late September, when the fountains were still running. In December this same spot is the Christmas market.*

How to Get There

Take Line 5 to Gwanghwamun Station and use Exit 9. It comes up in the middle of the square, right beside the Admiral Yi statue — but on a cold day you may not want to come up at all. The halls are underground, and so is the station, so you can walk the whole way without stepping outside. Exits 1 and 8 are the ones at the Sejong Center end if you are heading straight for the Admiral Yi hall.

Exit 9 comes up in the middle of the square, next to the Admiral Yi statue. The museums are directly below. Map: Naver Map

Exterior of the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts with its wide granite steps, Gwanghwamun, Seoul — *The Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, at the north-west corner of the square. The Admiral Yi hall runs underneath it, two floors down.*

If you need to check anything before you go, the Sejong and Yi halls answer on +82-2-399-1177. The line is in Korean, so if you do not speak it, call the Korea Travel Hotline on 1330 instead — English, Chinese and Japanese, around the clock, and the operators will phone on your behalf. Hours and closures are listed on the official Sejong Center site.

My Honest Take

Three free museums, one basement, no booking, and one of them open until eleven at night. For a family in central Seoul on a cold or wet day, I do not know a better use of two hours.

The warship is the thing my kids still talk about. The pillars are the thing I still think about.

If you are building a Gwanghwamun day, pair this with the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History across the road, or the Seoul Museum of History a few minutes west. For more on the Korean War itself, the War Memorial of Korea in Yongsan goes far deeper.

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