What Is K-Pop Square? Seoul's Two Landmarks, One Name

Search 'K-Pop Square Seoul' and two entirely different addresses come up. One is a curved LED screen the length of a football pitch, wrapped around a building in Gangnam. The other is a two-story merchandise store in Hongdae that, until recently, sold cartoon bears.

Neither place named itself after the other. They ended up sharing three English words years apart, and both are now full of tourists taking the same kind of photo.

Two addresses, one name, no relation to each other

The Gangnam version sits outside Samseong Station, wrapped around the Shinhan Card Artium building next to COEX mall. It has been called K-Pop Square Media since a Samsung-led consortium switched it on in March 2018.

The Hongdae version is a retail space near Hongik University, a few minutes from Exit 1. It only took the name K-Pop Square in June 2025, when its operator renamed what had been a Line Friends flagship store.

The two sit on opposite sides of the city, roughly forty minutes apart by subway, with no direct line connecting them. A visitor chasing both in one day is planning a cross-town trip, not a short walk between two halves of the same complex.

Both trade on the same audience: international fans who fly to Seoul specifically to stand somewhere K-pop feels concentrated. Neither location licensed the name from the other — there is no shared trademark holder connecting them.

The screen in Gangnam started as an outdoor-ad rule change

Before it was a fan destination, COEX K-Pop Square was a regulatory experiment. In 2016, South Korea revised its outdoor advertising law to allow free digital signage in designated zones, and Gangnam's COEX district was picked as the first.

Samsung Electronics supplied the display technology, CJ Powercast handled operations, and the Korea International Trade Association backed the project. Installed in March 2018, the result is a wraparound LED screen roughly 80.9 meters wide and 20.1 meters tall — about four basketball courts of display, running at a resolution of 7,840 by 1,952 pixels.

Why a giant digital wave made the screen famous

The billboard ran ordinary advertisements for two years. Then in May 2020, design studio d'strict debuted 'Wave,' a video of an ocean wave crashing inside a giant glass tank, built specifically for the screen's 90-degree curve.

The illusion only works because the display bends at a right angle — flat footage on a flat screen would look like nothing. 'Wave' was picked up by CNN, then won the top prize at the 2021 iF Design Award, and it is still the reason the screen shows up on lists of Seoul landmarks that have nothing to do with music.

What else the screen is used for

Between art installations, the square earns its K-pop name with a rotating loop of comeback trailers, agency-funded promotional clips, and idol birthday ads paid for by fan clubs, running roughly eighteen hours a day.

It has also doubled as a public gathering point for events that have nothing to do with K-pop:

• A 2018 World Cup public viewing that drew about 40,000 people
• Annual New Year's Eve countdown broadcasts
• Outdoor film festival screenings

How a Netflix movie turned the screen into a pilgrimage site

In 2025, Netflix's animated film KPop Demon Hunters used a billboard modeled on the real screen for its most-shared scene. When the fictional group HUNTR/X drops their single 'Golden,' the reveal is staged on a curved display built to match COEX K-Pop Square.

Netflix's own location guide and multiple Seoul travel sites confirm the filmmakers chose this specific screen because it already functioned as a K-pop landmark before the movie existed. Fans now visit specifically to recreate the 'Golden' reveal, not only to see 'Wave.'

The Hongdae store used to sell cartoon bears, not K-pop

The Hongdae location has a completely different origin. Until mid-2025 it operated as a Line Friends flagship store, selling merchandise built around Brown the bear, Cony the rabbit, and other messaging-app characters that had nothing to do with music.

Line Friends' parent company renamed itself IPX in 2023 and began shifting its retail identity toward K-pop-linked characters, including BT21, designed in collaboration with BTS, and Bunny, a character tied to NewJeans. The Hongdae renovation completed that pivot.

The change reflects where IPX's business has been moving: BT21 was co-created with BTS members through their agency, and Bunny was built around HYBE's NewJeans, meaning two of IPX's newer flagship characters are already tied to specific idol groups rather than to standalone cartoons.

Why a toy company rebranded around K-pop instead of cartoon bears

IPX reopened the store as K-Pop Square on June 20, 2025. The company describes it as a complex cultural space rather than a shop — visitors browse merchandise across two floors, with a cafe in the basement, while the store also hosts short-run pop-ups tied to specific artists.

Early pop-ups included a launch event for Zeroni, a character built around the group Zerobaseone, and a showcase for ZO&FRIENDS, a character line created around solo artist G-Dragon. The rebrand followed the fans, not the other way around — IPX's older character IP was losing ground to artist-specific merchandise, so the company built one store that sells both.

What the two places actually have in common

Strip away the name and the overlap is thin. One is public infrastructure that airs content for free under a government policy; the other is a private retail brand owned by a single company. One has been drawing crowds since 2018; the other opened in 2025.

What connects them is the customer, not the business. Both bet on the same fact: a visitor who travels to Seoul for K-pop will photograph anything that looks like a shrine to it, whether that is a screen or a shelf of merchandise.

Neither one requires the other to work. The Gangnam screen was already a landmark for two years before the Hongdae store existed, and the Hongdae store does not reference the screen anywhere in its branding or signage.

Why the same name keeps spreading to more cities

IPX has not stopped at Hongdae. Since the 2025 rebrand, the company has opened K-pop-focused retail spaces beyond Seoul:

• Busan's Centum City, IPX's first store outside the capital region
• Shibuya, Tokyo
• Universal CityWalk in Los Angeles

None of the international locations currently carry the exact 'K-Pop Square' name, but IPX has treated the Hongdae rebrand as a template it intends to repeat. That makes it plausible a third or fourth K-Pop Square opens somewhere before the naming overlap resolves on its own.

What's still unresolved for visitors

No single authority owns the phrase 'K-Pop Square' the way a trademark office would settle a naming dispute in most industries. Travel guides, including official Seoul tourism pages, list both locations under the same search term without flagging that they are unrelated.

For now, the practical fix is geography, not branding: Gangnam is the screen, Hongdae is the store, and checking which neighborhood a guide means is the only reliable way to know which K-Pop Square it is talking about.

The screen costs nothing to visit and runs around the clock outside Samseong Station Exit 5 or 6; the store keeps normal retail hours and charges for merchandise near Hongik University Exit 1. Until a map or a booking link is attached, that distinction is doing all the work the shared name does not.

Gangnam screen vs. Hongdae store

Frequently asked

Is K-Pop Square in Gangnam or Hongdae?

Both — Gangnam has the LED screen outside Samseong Station, and Hongdae has the K-Pop Square retail store near Hongik University; the two are unrelated.

Is K-Pop Square free to visit?

The Gangnam screen is free and runs around the clock, while the Hongdae store keeps normal retail hours and charges for merchandise.

Why does K-Pop Square appear in KPop Demon Hunters?

Netflix built a billboard modeled on the real COEX screen for the 'Golden' reveal scene because it was already a recognized K-pop landmark before the movie existed.