A render of Lotte Department Store's Young Plaza in the Myeongdong area in central SeoulLOTTE DEPARTMENT STORE
Lotte Department Store will transform the entire exterior of the Young Plaza at its Myeongdong main store into a giant digital canvas for Christmas.
A media facade — covering 1,614 square meters (17,373 square feet) — will display digital visual content on the building, according to the retailer on Thursday. The display, dubbed Lotte Town Light, spans the equivalent of four basketball courts and is slightly larger than the neighboring 1,354-square-meter digital screen at the rival Shinsegae Department Store.
Lotte Town is a retail and hospitality complex in the Myeongdong area in central Seoul.
Lotte Town Light will officially begin operations during the Christmas season in December. The company will unveil a teaser video in November inspired by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's novel "The Sorrows of Young Werther" (1774). The company is named after Lotte, the nickname of Charlotte, the woman Werther falls in love with in the novel.
"The high-performance light-emitting diode panels will deliver sharp images from as far as 1 kilometer [0.62 miles] away,” a Lotte Department Store representative said. "We plan to showcase a wide range of digital content spanning culture, art and entertainment.”
The retailer will also continue the ongoing renovation of Young Plaza.
Beginning next month, Lotte will renovate the so-called Cosmonergy Plaza, an underground space connecting the main building of the Myeongdong branch with Euljiro 1-ga Station on Seoul subway's Line No. 2. The 840-square-meter space will be redesigned to showcase the city’s attractions to international visitors.
Christmas-themed content is displayed on a screen installed outside the Shinsegae Department Store in the Myeongdong area in central Seoul on Dec. 24, 2025.YONHAP
Department stores are stepping up efforts to attract shoppers. About 4.5 million foreign visitors traveled to Myeongdong during the first half of last year, the highest figure among Seoul's major commercial districts, according to the Korea Tourism Organization.
Foreign sales at Lotte Department Store's Myeongdong branch rose 140 percent in the first half of this year compared to a year earlier. International shoppers accounted for 30 percent of the store's total sales during the period.
"We will continue expanding distinctive content throughout Lotte Town in the Myeongdong area," Lotte Department Store CEO Jung Hyun-seok said.
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
