You might have heard of the prestigious Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) before, but what exactly is BIFF Square?
I couldn’t really wrap my head around the idea of this being a tourist destination, and it took some searching from KTO to find out.
As it turns out, BIFF square is named as it’s a place filled with first-run movie theatres, street food, & handprints of famous Korean actors. In essence, it is an area that is actively used to promote Korea’s film industry.
What to see and eat in BIFF Square
Strangely enough, most of what you find here in BIFF Square has nothing much to do with the movies these days. It has evolved into a shopping and eating paradise for young people and tourists.
Here, you will find what is arguably the most famous hotteok in Busan, and probably the whole of Korea: Ssiat Hotteok.
I forgot to take a photo of the stall, but here’s one that a helpful traveller uploaded on TripAdvisor:
So here’s the food:
I think it cost us 2000 won per hotteok? This particular hotteok stall is really very famous, and you can easily spot it from afar thanks to the long queues that never seem to end. Even the locals love this.
We also got ourselves a < 1 liter cup of tea from 1 Liter Coffee (so ironic, I know) to eat & drink while we walked around BIFF.
Most of the shops around this area are F&B establishments: for example, we headed to Hong Kong Banjeom 0410+ and King Kong Budae here for lunch and dinner respectively.
There is also a cute shop that has a lot of gacha machines, and we got ourselves miniature jumping pirates!! Yes, the kind that they always play on variety shows like Running Man!
Some other shops you can find in BIFF are mostly just fashion (shoes, clothes) that you can also find in other parts of Busan, and certainly Seoul.
Of course, you can’t forget to look out for these:
A lot of them are scattered all over the grounds of BIFF Square, so you may spot a few from famous directors, actors, and your idols!
DIRECTIONS
Address: 20, BIFF Gwangjang-ro, Jung-gu, Busan
