The Seoul Museum of Craft Art gave us one of the best days we have had with our daughter, and it cost almost nothing. Here is what that day looked like: a free children’s museum inside a craft museum, a wildflower meadow next door, and an afternoon of hands-on crafts in Insadong — all within a fifteen-minute walk of each other, and all a minute from Gyeongbokgung.
If you are already planning a palace morning, this is the afternoon to attach to it. One thing to sort out first, though: the Children’s Museum is free but requires an online reservation, and slots open only seven days ahead. More on that below.
Seoul Museum of Craft Art Children’s Museum — free, but book ahead
The Seoul Museum of Craft Art sits on the old Andong Byeolgung palace grounds in Anguk, one minute on foot from Anguk Station exit 1. The whole museum is free. Inside its education building, on floors two and three, is a children’s museum built entirely around making things.
It is not a look-at-things museum. Children move between a craft village and a set of studios, choosing fabric, thread, buttons, beads and tools, and building something to take home. Our daughter spent most of her session on a paper doll she dressed in real fabric, tulle, sequins and buttons — the museum calls it a Designer’s Note — and finished it convinced she had produced couture.
The rope-net playground on the third floor was the other highlight, and worth knowing about in advance: it is open only to children between 100 cm and 140 cm tall, and non-slip socks are compulsory. Bring a pair; you will not want to be the family turned away at the net.
There is also a glow-in-the-dark corner where children draw with fluorescent markers under UV light, against a wall of neon thread spools. It is the quiet room when the rest gets loud.
One caution worth reading properly. The self-directed craft workshop is pitched at ages five to eight and runs without an instructor. The tools are real — carving knives, hammers, screwdrivers, pliers, scissors, glue. The museum says plainly that it needs active supervision and patient waiting from the accompanying adult. Plan to be hands-on rather than sitting with your phone.
How to book
- Reservations open at 15:30, exactly seven days before your visit. If you want a Saturday, set an alarm for 15:30 the previous Saturday.
- Four sessions a day, 80 minutes each: 10:00, 13:10, 14:50 and 16:30, Tuesday to Sunday.
- Age limit: children aged 9 or under (by Korean “year age”) with an adult. In 2026 that means born on or after 1 January 2017. Children outside the age range, unaccompanied children, and adults without a child cannot enter.
- Group size: up to four people per account, including at least one adult — so a maximum of three children.
- On the day: collect your ticket at the education building information desk before going up.
- Closed: every Monday, and 1 January.
The main museum galleries are open 10:00–18:00 with last entry at 17:30, and stay open until 21:00 on Fridays. Those need no reservation at all — just walk in.
Getting to the Seoul Museum of Craft Art
- Address: 4 Yulgok-ro 3-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul
- Subway: Anguk Station (Line 3), exit 1 — 60 metres
- Parking: there is none for general visitors. The site is a protected historic one, so come by subway.
- Phone: 02-6450-7000
Songhyeon Green Plaza — two minutes away, and free
Walk out of the museum and you are at the edge of Songhyeon Green Plaza, a large open meadow that spent a century behind a four-metre wall — Japanese colonial bank housing, then US military quarters, then two decades of dereliction — before Seoul opened it to the public.
What is there now is simply grass, wildflowers and sky, which in central Seoul is remarkable. Poppies and cornflowers in late spring, cosmos and zinnias in autumn, a 400-metre path through the middle, mountains on the horizon and the museum’s curved brick facade on one side. It is open all year, all hours, and free, with toilets on site.
For a family it is the perfect release valve after a museum session: somewhere to run, no admission, no queue, and paths through the middle that shortcut to Gyeongbokgung, Bukchon and Insadong.
Insadong and Ssamzigil — crafts you can take home
From the plaza, Insadong’s pedestrianised main street is about ten minutes south. It is the traditional-crafts quarter: paper, brushes, ceramics, tea, and a great deal of browsing.
The place to head with children is Ssamzigil, a four-storey building at 44 Insadong-gil built as one continuous spiral ramp around a courtyard — no stairs, no lifts to hunt for, and a stroller can go the whole way up. Craft shops and small studios line the ramp, with a rooftop garden at the top and workshops in the basement. It opens 10:30–20:30, closed on Lunar New Year’s Day and Chuseok.
Making a keycap keyring
We stopped at PUPO, one of the drop-in workshops in the complex. Our daughter pressed coloured clay into a keycap mould, chose charms and beads from a tray, and walked out twenty minutes later with a keyring she had made herself. No booking, no Korean needed — you point at what you want, they show you what to do.
This is what Insadong does well for children. Most of the workshops here are walk-in, take fifteen to thirty minutes, and send you home with an object rather than a photo. Prices vary by studio and by what you make, so ask at the counter before you start.
A caricature portrait
The other thing worth doing, and the thing our daughter still talks about, is a caricature. Several artists work in small studios along Insadong-gil; you sit, they draw from life, and about fifteen minutes later you have a signed watercolour portrait.
It costs less than most of the souvenirs in the shops around it, it is genuinely handmade, and it survives the journey home better than anything ceramic. If you want a specific artist, some studios take same-day bookings through Naver Place; otherwise just walk in and wait your turn.
Where everything is
Everything on this page sits inside one 15-minute walk. The pin below is the Seoul Museum of Craft Art; Gyeongbokgung is to the west, Songhyeon Green Plaza directly north, and Insadong just to the south.
Open each stop in Google Maps:
- open it in Google Maps — Anguk Station (Line 3), exit 1
- Songhyeon Green Plaza — 2 minutes north of the museum
- Ssamzigil, Insadong — about 10 minutes south
- Gyeongbokgung Palace — about 10 minutes west
Putting the Seoul Museum of Craft Art day together
Here is the order that worked for us, and why.
- Morning: Gyeongbokgung. It is a ten-minute walk from the craft museum. Go early, before the heat and the crowds.
- Early afternoon: the Children’s Museum, on a 13:10 or 14:50 session. Book it seven days ahead at 15:30 — do this first, because everything else is walk-in and this is not.
- Late afternoon: Songhyeon Green Plaza. Two minutes from the museum door. Let them run.
- Evening: Insadong and Ssamzigil. Ten minutes further, a keyring or a caricature, dinner nearby, and home.
The whole day costs the price of the palace ticket, a couple of craft workshops and dinner. Both museums and the plaza are free.
What to bring: non-slip socks for the net playground, a spare layer for the plaza in the evening, and patience for the craft workshop — the tools are real and the adult is the instructor.
Planning more of the trip? See our guide to rainy day activities in Seoul with kids for when the weather turns, the 7 best free museums in Seoul for kids for more no-cost days, and the 5 best palaces in Seoul with kids for the morning half of this itinerary.
Opening hours, reservation rules and age limits can change. Always check the official websites before you go — the Seoul Museum of Craft Art is at craftmuseum.seoul.go.kr.