Garak Market trades fish crates for beer steins at its rooftop Oktoberfest

Garak Market, the sprawling wholesale hub in Songpa-gu that normally traffics in crates of cabbage and tubs of live octopus, hangs up its apron for three nights this month. Starting Oct. 16, the Seoul Agricultural & Marine Products Corporation, the city-affiliated body that runs the market, hosts the third annual Garak Oktoberfest on the Sky Park, the open-air lawn atop the market's third-floor mall building. The festival runs through Oct. 18, 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. each night, and sits a short walk from Garak Market Station on lines 3 and 8, Exit 2-1.

The pitch is a rooftop beer garden stocked with independent Korean craft breweries, poured alongside whatever the market's vendors are grilling, steaming or searing downstairs. Rather than importing schweinshaxe or weisswurst, organizers are leaning on Garak's own seafood stalls, meat butchers and street-food carts, so a pint of local lager might be chased with grilled mackerel or a skewer of pork belly bought fresh off the market floor.

This is a young tradition still finding its shape. The first Garak Oktoberfest ran in 2024 with little fanfare, and last year's second edition, billed as the Garak Oktoberfest Food Night, drew roughly 20 breweries from around the country, pop-up food stalls, a cooking competition featuring chefs from the Netflix show Culinary Class Wars, a cosplay contest and a pumpkin-rolling game, according to listings for the 2025 event. Organizers say this year's version pushes further into audience participation, adding a parade and a game hall called Garak Entertainment Hall, plus a raffle stocked with prizes including a Dyson Airwrap and an LG StanbyME screen.

A share of the festival's proceeds is earmarked for Hasang Paul's House, a free soup kitchen that operates inside the market, tying the beer garden to Garak's quieter role as a feeding ground for people who cannot afford its produce.

The timing puts Garak's rooftop party inside a crowded autumn calendar. Just weeks earlier, Oktoberfest Seoul opened at Oil Tank Culture Park in Mapo-gu, the first Korean festival licensed by the city of Munich to use the Oktoberfest name, complete with a ticketed Big Tent and a visit from German Ambassador Georg Schmidt, as The Korea Times reported in June. Genesis BBQ and a scatter of golf resorts have run their own Oktoberfest-branded promotions in recent autumns too. Garak's version carries no German license and no imported menu, just a market corporation betting that its own seafood and grilled meat can stand in for pretzels. Entry and brewery lineup details are posted through the Seoul Agricultural & Marine Products Corporation's event channels; this account was checked Oct. 10, 2026.