Yangdong Market opened in 1910 and is Gwangju's largest and oldest traditional market, still organized the old way — a skate-fish alley here, a chicken-parts alley there, each lane with its own smell and soundtrack, so the market feels less like a single building and more like a small city made of specialty streets. It has one footnote in national politics, too: days before the December 2002 presidential election, candidate Roh Moo-hyun stopped at a soup restaurant here and finished his bowl of gukbap without leaving a grain of rice — the moment got enough attention that the restaurant is still nicknamed "Roh Moo-hyun's gukbap house" today. But the event that made this market a symbol of the city happened decades earlier. On May 18, 1980, as the martial law army began its bloody crackdown, street vendors — most of them women — carried their own cooking pots out into the street, cooked rice, and shaped it into rice balls to feed the citizen militia fighting the soldiers. Cooking a meal in the open, with tear gas drifting through the air and gunfire nearby, was not a small act of courage.
Those rice balls (jumeokbap) went on to become a symbol of the Gwangju Uprising, and the vendors of Yangdong Market and the nearby Daein Market were later honored with the "May Mothers Award" for their role. Yangdong Market itself was designated Gwangju Uprising Historic Site No. 19. Today it's a place where grocery shoppers and history-minded visitors walk the same lanes. If it's raining, or the midday heat is unbearable, you won't find a better indoor alternative — and once you've eaten a plate of skate-fish salad or grilled chicken gizzard here, the market stops being just "an old traditional market" and starts feeling like a place that helped Gwangju survive its hardest days.