Jagalchi Market

This guide to Jagalchi Market in Busan starts on the ground floor, among tanks of live octopus and flounder hauled in that morning, then rides the escalator up through a restaurant, a karaoke room and spa, offices, an art gallery and a rooftop observatory, asking why a fish market needs seven floors at all. It traces the answer back to the jagalchi ajummas, the women who built this waterfront trade by hand table by table on what was once loose gravel, and to what happened when the current building replaced the old market in 2006. Stand at a ground-floor tank and look straight up to feel the scale of what got stacked above it.