Yangnyeongsi medicine market

Opened in 1658 by royal decision, the market was held twice a year, in spring and autumn, to gather the herbs of the southern provinces and supply the Seoul court. Ginseng, deer antler, astragalus root and hundreds of other materials passed through. The street is now permanent, with more than three hundred shops, wholesalers and Korean medicine practices, and a museum explaining the four constitutions of sasang, a nineteenth-century Korean diagnostic system. The smell of dried roots carries several streets away.