December's things to do

Mija Seoul has been making waves since it first opened in May. The restaurant focuses on creating a dinner menu inspired by hearty Korean fare made with local and seasonal ingredients. Apart from using produce from the restaurant's rooftop garden, they also take time to source from local farms. Here, you’ll find Danish chef Kevin Kroløkke, who brings with him 10 years of restaurant experience from the now defunct, Michelin-starred, Restaurant Relæ. He helms the restaurant with his partner Tina Choi (also known as Doobydobap on TikTok and Instagram).

As soon as you’re in, watch out! You might accidentally sign up for a year membership. For those of you who don’t like to exercise but want to gain some muscles, or those who want to live back the moments when you were a child playing sports, Sports Monster is the place for you. Taking up around 5290 square meters on the 4th and rooftop, it is the world’s first ‘sportainment’ theme park. Basketball, volleyball and futsal, just to mention a few ball games, along with indoor rock-climbing, LED sports court, trampolines (that can make you jump more than 4m), 8.5m parachuting, bike racing, a dizzying rope course and Icarus flying experience are among the 30 varieties of sport contents that can be enjoyed. You can spend the whole day here without even noticing the minutes and hours pass right by you. You might even find yourself urging to return to the mall just to come back to Sports Monster.

Remember the scene in the romantic comedy About Time, when a girl and a boy first encounter each other in complete darkness. A similar total-darkness experience is available in Seoul, unfortunately, its concept is not about finding your one true love. Rather, Dialogue in the Dark (located in Bukchon) is an awareness raising exhibition. It was created in 1988 by Andreas Heinecke as a result of a life-long search for answers to the question, “On what ground do we judge people and feel inferior or superior?” Interestingly, it was an acquaintance who had lost his eyesight in a car accident that helped Heinecke realize not only the answers to his question but also his fascination of the world of blind people. In order to confront this prejudice about blindness, Dialogue in the Dark was started, in a small warehouse. Now, this exhibition has over 130 locations in 20 different countries with over 9 million visitors. Once inside, you will be stripped of all possible lighting devices (phones, watches, etc.) and will be ‘blind’ for 100 minutes. You will listen to the directions of the ‘road master’ and utilize a white cane to navigate rooms of different themes; leaves, forest, using wind to rotate a sailboat in the right direction, matching smell and touch with places and objects, etc. Dialogue in the Dark isn’t just about being blind; it’s an experience that will indulge yourself in all your other senses. For safety issues, only visitors between the age of 9 to 70 are allowed, with...