During the last IADS Mid-year meeting in Seoul in June 2025, member CEOs had the opportunity to visit several Korean retail landmarks, including the much-acclaimed The Hyundai Seoul. To provide them with a complete understanding of the specificities of the Korean market, a visit to Hyundai’s first-ever department store in Seoul, in the Apgujeong neighbourhood, completed the tour.

Interestingly, this visit generated the highest number of questions, as this visit allowed all visitors to understand the weight of the VICs[1] in the traditional Korean department store business, to an extent well beyond what is experimented in other retail markets.

This Exclusive aims at understanding the specificities of this store and what it tells about high-end Korean retail. A picture report completes this article.

IADS Exclusive: Hyundai Apgujeong, a VIC playbook or how Korea treats its Han-picked clients

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