"On a day off, do you leave it open and do whatever you feel like, or do you catch up on everything you have been putting off? Which is closer to you?"
On the fourth floor of Hanwha General Insurance's office building in Hannam-dong, Yongsan District, Seoul, on the 21st, hands moved quickly across a casino gaming table as the host posed the question. Each participant had been given 10 chips to place on the table according to their answer. When players tied, they settled it with rock-paper-scissors. At the end of the game, participants received cards describing them as a "time coordinator" or a "self-completion expander," prompts meant to invite reflection on their own lives.
The casino-style room is one of several experience spaces at Wellness Cruise Hannam, an event organized by Hanwha General Insurance. From the 21st through the 25th, the company has turned its Hannam building into an urban wellness festival venue. The word "cruise" in the title is deliberate: like a cruise voyage, where the journey matters as much as the destination, the event invites visitors to step briefly out of daily routine and find their own approach to health and rest.
Visitors begin at a "boarding desk" on the second floor and move between floors to sample the programs. Some 30 wellness brands are taking part across 12 themed spaces, with the journey ending at the Final Port on the first basement level.
Wandering through the building proved rewarding. Leaving the casino game for another room on the same floor brought an entirely different mood. One corner held a rest area for women who are pregnant, giving birth or raising young children. Created with Lush Spa and PLUS CLOVR, Hanwha Financial's women's wellness brand, the space offered programs including massages for expectant mothers. A nearby arcade area featured artificial intelligence-based health management services and products from various wellness companies.
The fifth floor was fitted out as a sauna space, a modern reinterpretation of Korea's ondol underfloor heating tradition. Encountering a casino and a sauna in the same office building felt unfamiliar and intriguing at once. Each floor shifted in atmosphere and theme, much like moving among facilities aboard a ship.
The food space on the third floor also drew attention. Non-alcoholic coffee drinks offered the mood of whisky or a cocktail without the alcohol. Next to it, an alternative coffee made from natural ingredients recreated coffee flavor for people avoiding caffeine. The lineup was built for those who want the atmosphere of a drinking occasion without the drink, or the taste of coffee without the caffeine. "We see not drinking as a form of wellness in itself, and we also prepared alternative coffee for people who cannot take caffeine," an official at Hanwha General Insurance said. "We selected participating brands against the shared standard of a healthy daily life."
Elsewhere, visitors could taste bakery goods made with local produce and traditional banquet dishes. The Glass House, a greenhouse-style space, introduced seasonal ingredients and regional food culture and offered a workshop making small keepsakes from plants. At an exercise space called Vegetable Gym, works grafting vegetable and plant shapes onto exercise equipment caught the eye. Exercise, food and art each connected to the wellness theme in their own way.
The journey ended at the Final Port on the first basement level. Named after a disembarkation point, the roughly 660-square-meter space turned away from the variety of the earlier experiences and focused entirely on rest. Visitors remove their shoes, lie down comfortably and spend a while doing nothing, taking in music, scent and light. Moving the body and tasting new foods are health care, the space suggests, but so is doing nothing at all.
The festival runs daily from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., and admission is free. Some programs require advance reservation or a separate fee.
This is the first large-scale wellness culture project Hanwha General Insurance has staged. After declaring its shift to a women-focused insurer in 2023, the company has been extending its services beyond insurance products into women's health and daily life more broadly. On the same day, the company's Femtech Research Institute released the 2026 Korea Women's Report, its first since the institute was founded in 2023, surveying women's lives across six areas: physical health, mental health, relationships, growth, finances, and time and daily living. Among the 3,000 women surveyed, 53.2% named finances as the most important wellness area.
