Steel toured Namdaemun Market on Saturday, sharing photographs on X of herself and her husband, attorney Shawn Steel, posing outside the market and holding hotteok, a Korean griddle pancake, alongside a vendor.
"Returning to Namdaemun Market after so many years brought back so many memories," Steel wrote.
"It is wonderful to rediscover Seoul — a city that is both familiar and new to me."
A day earlier, she posted a photograph taken before the statue of King Sejong at Gwanghwamun, saying the monument reminded her of Korea's legacy of innovation and leadership.
Born in Seoul in 1955 to a family displaced from the North, Steel emigrated to the United States in 1975.
She went on to serve on California's Board of Equalization, as an Orange County supervisor and as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and is seen as close to President Donald Trump and the party's mainstream.
Her arrival on Thursday filled a post that had stood vacant for about a year and a half. Fluent in Korean, she is expected to help reinforce the alliance by bridging the sensibilities of both nations.
Steel, a devout Christian, also attended Sunday worship at Youngnak Presbyterian Church in central Seoul, a congregation founded by refugees from the North that her own displaced parents once attended, according to local media reports.
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