Amorepacific Museum of Art (APMA) in Yongsan: what's on and how to get in

Inside Amorepacific's headquarters in Yongsan sits APMA, the Amorepacific Museum of Art — a serious contemporary-art space that happens to share a building with a cosmetics giant. It's an easy add-on to a Seoul beauty or shopping trip, and increasingly a destination on its own for people chasing striking architecture and a design-forward museum shop.

The museum occupies the ground floor and basement of the Foster + Partners-designed headquarters, known for its white latticed screens around a huge atrium. For 2026, the headline show is "APMA, CHAPTER FIVE — FROM THE APMA COLLECTION," running April 1 to August 2, with around 50 paintings, photographs, sculptures and installations by roughly 40 artists, including David Hockney, Rose Wylie, Kiki Smith, Nam June Paik, Lee Bul and Lee Ufan. From September the museum hosts Jonas Wood's first solo show in Asia, spanning around 80 works from two decades of his career. A free multilingual APMA GUIDE app gives gallery-by-gallery commentary.

Visitors on Naver and Instagram repeatedly note that popular entry slots sell out within days of booking opening, so same-day walk-ins are a gamble on weekends. People consistently praise the building as much as the art — the atrium, the way light moves through the lattice screens — and a gift shop full of design objects rather than typical souvenirs.

Practical info: 100 Hangang-daero, Yongsan-gu (용산구 한강대로 100). Nearest station is Sinyongsan (Line 4), exit 2, with an underground passage straight into the building's basement. Open Tuesday–Sunday, 10:00–18:00; closed Mondays, January 1, and the Lunar New Year and Chuseok holidays (as of September 2026). Special exhibitions are ticketed; book online ahead if you can. The basement carpark (B3–B4) gives visitors 90 minutes free.

Nearby: the National Museum of Korea and Yongsan Family Park are a 15–20 minute walk, and Amorepacific's own ground-floor beauty store is right there for afterward.

Would you plan around the Hockney-heavy collection show, or wait for the Jonas Wood retrospective in September?

Sources: APMA — Exhibition · Amorepacific — 2026 exhibition announcement · Amorepacific — Headquarters Checked: September 2026

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Photos: kallerna, CC BY-SA 4.0