A Day Around COEX, Gangnam: Seonjeongneung, Bongeunsa, Aquarium, Library

All three close, but on different terms. Checking the hours for one of them tells you nothing about the other two.

Seonjeongneung closes by day of the week. Mondays, and when the Monday is a public holiday it takes the following day instead. Of the four it is the one that can vanish from a plan altogether.

Seonjeongneung also closes by season. Last admission falls into three bands — March to October, February, and November to January — and the winter band is the earliest. On a winter afternoon it stops admitting people two and a half hours before the aquarium does.

The aquarium closes by the clock. Last entry is an hour before the doors shut. In exchange it is open every day of the year, so the weekday never matters.

Starfield Library closes too. It takes no ticket, but it does keep hours, and they run later than any of the other three.

Bongeunsa is the one left out. Its own site publishes no opening hours and no admission fee anywhere; what it does publish hours for is the bakery, the noodle canteen, the Buddhist-goods shop and the florist — which is a fair description of how the grounds are actually used.

The three that publish a price

This assumes a day that is neither a Monday nor in winter. On either of those, Seonjeongneung drops out or gets squeezed into the morning, and the order below no longer holds.

1. 1

   Seonjeongneung in the morning. It opens earlier than anything else here, which makes it a morning walk, and an hour is enough. In winter its last admission pulls a long way forward, so the morning is the only part of the day that fits.

2. 2

   Lunch at Bongeunsa. The temple's noodle canteen closes for a break in the afternoon after lunch service and then reopens. Check the break on the canteen card above and arrive before it.

3. 3

   The aquarium before last entry. Buy online before arriving — the operator sells the same adult ticket cheaper than the gate.

4. 4

   Starfield Library last. No fee, no ticket, no last entry, and open later than the other three, so you spend exactly the time you have left.

Reversing the middle two is the common mistake: the temple in the late afternoon and the aquarium afterwards leaves you at a door that has already stopped admitting people.

If the day gets shorter, keep one outdoor stop and one indoor one. Missed the morning? Drop Seonjeongneung and start at Bongeunsa. Raining? The two stops inside the mall make half a day on their own.

Outside the east plaza of COEX there is a five-metre bronze of two hands, wrists crossed. It is the horse dance from Gangnam Style, and Gangnam-gu unveiled it on 15 April 2016.

A quick look is enough, but the details behind it are worth knowing. It is 5 metres high and 8 metres across, designed by Hwang Man-seok of the Korean Society of Visual Information Design, who donated the work. Seen from above, the two hands are cradling the earth. Stand underneath and the song plays. After dark it is lit by LEDs.

The district spent 418 million won on it, and the reaction at the time was not kind — the reporting that covered the unveiling also covered the "waste of money" complaints. It sits on the walk between the mall and the temple, so you will pass it either way; it does not need a slot in the plan.