On Thursday, traffic around Eunma Shopping Center in Seoul's affluent Daechi-dong had nearly ground to a halt.
Cars trying to enter the parking lot became tangled with vehicles searching for somewhere else to stop. Parking attendants moved between them and police were on hand, but the cars kept coming. Some drivers left their vehicles along the outer edge of the sprawling Eunma Apartment complex and walked.
Inside the parking area, shoppers moved between cars carrying bags of jeon, rice cakes and other holiday food.
Underground, the crush was heavier.
Fight for jeon, a Korean holiday staple
The smell of oil from frying jeon filled the basement. Vendors called out orders while customers shouted that they were trying to get through. Behind the counters, workers flipped another batch of donggeurangttaeng, or stuffed meat pancakes, packed rice cakes and filled containers with seasoned vegetables without pause.
A walk from one end of the basement to the other normally takes less than five minutes.
On Thursday, it took about 20.
Donggeurangttaeng, the small pan-fried meat patties common on Korean holiday tables, disappeared steadily from trays alongside osaek-jeon, shrimp jeon and stuffed perilla leaves.
Lines at some shops spilled toward the entrances and up the stairways. Customers waiting for holiday food could be seen as high as the third floor.
The shopping center opened in 1979.
Kim Jin-sung had known its name for most of his life.
The 46-year-old Jamsil resident arrived around 10:30 a.m. to buy jeon before heading to his parents' home for Chuseok. He spent more than an hour waiting to park.
"I don't mind waiting, but the passageways are so narrow and there are so many people that I did think it could be dangerous," Kim said.
He was relieved he had not brought his children.
Yet the congestion was not enough to make him leave.
"Eunma was famous even when I was young," Kim said. "My parents knew it, and the parents of people around me knew it too."
For Kim, part of the appeal is what has not changed.
"There is something nostalgic about having this almost traditional-market-like place still standing right in the middle of Gangnam," he said. "There is a lot to eat, and there are a lot of memories attached to it."
Eunma Shopping Center dates to an earlier phase of Gangnam's development, opening alongside the massive apartment complex as southern Seoul was being transformed by large-scale housing construction.
The center once served as an all-purpose neighborhood shopping hub. Oral histories collected by the Seoul Museum of History recall corridors crowded with shoppers in the 1980s and 1990s and shuttle buses operated for customers.
Its role changed as department stores, supermarkets and online shopping reshaped how Seoul residents bought everyday goods.
The basement food shops, however, remained a draw.
For Kim, Eunma was a place his parents' generation already knew.
For Sim Su-jin, it came through Instagram.
Sim, 28, traveled from Uijeongbu with her boyfriend after repeatedly seeing posts featuring Eunma's jeon and other foods. She had never visited before but decided to come ahead of Chuseok to buy something for her parents.
Her first reaction was disbelief.
"I thought, 'Really? In a place like this?'" Sim said.
Parking took longer than expected. By the time she reached the shops, the lines were winding around stairways and the basement was so crowded that, she said, it was difficult to see what some stores were selling.
After about 30 minutes, she had barely moved.
"I don't even know yet whether the jeon is really that good because I haven't tried it," Sim said with a laugh. "But it's famous, and I thought my parents would like it."
Hungry, she and her boyfriend bought gimbap from another well-known shop in the complex and ate while they waited.
She said she could imagine returning on an ordinary day for a date. On Thursday, however, the density of the crowd made her uneasy.
"The basement feels like a maze, and the passages are really narrow," she said. "With this many people, I do worry about safety."
The holiday rush comes as the formal ritual historically associated with Chuseok continues to decline.
A Korea Rural Economic Institute survey of 1,000 consumers found that 27.3 percent planned to hold charye, the ancestral memorial rite traditionally performed during the holiday, down from 40.4 percent a year earlier.
Shopping habits have shifted as well.
A Rural Development Administration survey of 1,000 consumers in the Seoul metropolitan area found that the share buying holiday food online rose from 2 percent a decade ago to 21 percent. Online purchases of Chuseok gifts increased from 9 percent to 37.4 percent over the same period.
At Eunma, however, one of the busiest categories was precisely the kind of food that saves families hours of preparation at home.
Workers stood over hot griddles turning out batch after batch of jeon as customers carried the finished dishes away.
From basement market to warehouse aisles
At Costco, the Chuseok rush took a different form.
The store was considerably busier than on an ordinary weekday, but wide aisles left shoppers room to move. Large carts passed one another loaded with meat, cooking ingredients, liquor and boxed gifts.
Alcohol gift sets were prominent, along with the familiar boxes of Spam that remain a staple of Korean holiday gift-giving.
Lee Chang-yong, a 56-year-old resident of Gangseo District, said his reason for shopping there was straightforward.
"The portions are big," Lee said. "When the whole family gets together for a holiday, you need more food."
For Lee, Chuseok meant seeing relatives he had not met for some time, sitting down together and talking over a meal.
Costco also allowed him to handle much of the preparation in one place.
"You can buy almost everything here," he said. "There are already-made foods too, so you can just pick some up and share them with the family."
He also came for holiday gift sets, particularly liquor.
"Giving someone just a bottle is one thing," Lee said. "When it comes as a gift set, it feels nicer to receive."
Parking and space mattered too.
"In the past, you went through markets bumping into people while trying to shop," he said. "Here, you park the car, shop comfortably and take everything straight home."
A few aisles away, Won Mi-ok was filling her cart with a less predictable Chuseok menu.
The 65-year-old Yangjae resident had bought pork for sanjeok, along with crab sticks, green onions and other ingredients for osaek-jeon.
She had also picked up snacks for her grandchildren.
Before leaving, she planned to buy a bulgogi bake and pizza.
"These days, just because it's Chuseok, do we really have to put only the foods people used to put on the table?" Won said with a laugh.
She pushed her cart toward the next aisle.
"Times are changing."
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