I’ve now been back from Korea for 5 months, which is about the same amount of time I was actually there. I’m still missing it and my life there a lot, though I’ve now managed to find some good Korean food in London (shout out to the tteokkbokki at 3Kobros) I’m escaping more to the countryside around London on my bike, and I finally got around to printing photos to decorate my flat with some of my memories from Korea. I remember talking to a friend whilst I was out there and apologising that she wouldn’t be able to come and stay with me whilst I was there (the visa rules were very restrictive because of Covid, and my flat was too small to host people) and she said she’d much rather go back with me another time when I wasn’t working and could show her around more. At the time I thought ‘I’ve been here for months, why would I come back?!’ And now I can’t wait til I have the time and money to go back and be her tour guide!
Read more: What to do if you visit KoreaTo that end (and because I’m usually thinking about Korea) I’ve tried to work out what things I would do or things I would recommend for others to do on a visit. So many people have said they’d love to visit Korea, it’s increasingly popular and on people’s wish-lists. So I hope you can find some ideas here, and I’d be more than happy to share more info or answer questions! Most of my recommendations revolve around Seoul, which is where I think most people’s itineraries would start. But I have added some ideas for other places I visited too. This is a long post – there’s so much to do!
SEOUL
In all likelihood, your flight would arrive into Seoul, and you could easily spend 2 weeks and have your entire Korea trip here. It’s the country’s biggest city with nearly 10 million people. Here’s some of my favourite things to do in Seoul.
VISIT A PALACE
There are several palaces to visit in Seoul – Gyeongbokgung, Changdeokgung, Changgyeonggung and Deoksugung. They’re all in the centre of Seoul and are very easy and cheap to access. Gyeonbokgung is the largest and costs ₩3000 to get in, which is less than £2. It’s a beautiful place to visit but most of the palace is a reconstruction. Changdeokgung has the most beautiful gardens and is the palace where the royal family lived most recently. It has a very interesting area where the traditional palace building has been fitted with 1920s mod-cons. It’s also well worth booking to go on the secret garden tour. Changgyeonggung is a nice place to walk around (also with beautiful gardens), and whilst Deoksugung is only small, it’s a good place to stop and sit down with a coffee after walking around Seoul, particularly as entry is only ₩1000.
It’s also worth knowing you can get entry to the palaces for free if you are wearing Hanbok, traditional Korean dress. All around the palaces you’ll see loads of Hanbok rental places, we rented hanbok for ₩10000 each for a couple of hours and went to Gyeongbokgung for the evening opening. It was really fun to wear the beautiful clothes and join in with the crowds of other people wearing them too.
VISIT A MUSEUM
There are several good museums in Seoul. The National Museum of Korea (which you might recognise from this BTS video) is the obvious choice for an overview of Korean history though there are a LOT of writings and scrolls. There are also some important “National Treasures” – not a Nicholas Cage film, but something deemed culturally significant. And there’s a couple of amazing rooms with video installations showing Korean folk stories, legends and histories.
I also particularly enjoyed the National Folk Museum, which is much more about every day life and culture. It also has a great installation with a traditional house where projections change to show a year in the life of the house and the changing seasons. And the Folk Music Museum (near Changdeokgung), whilst only tiny, was also worth popping in. It may seem nerdy, but it was a very well done museum and a nice place to pop in.
TOUR AROUND BUKCHON HANOK VILLAGE
There is a well established walking tour around Bukchon Hanok Village, an area of traditional houses (hanok) in the north of Seoul, near the palaces. Exit Anguk station and head north to the Bukchon Cultural Centre to get a map of the tour with the interesting areas marked out. As you walk around the Hanok Village you get a great view back over Seoul, and there are several places to stop for coffee. Take your time on the walk, some of it is a bit steep but it’s really enjoyable, and you get some good photo opportunities.
VISIT INSADONG
Insadong is a great touristy area full of shops, cafes, traditional restaurants and is a great place to buy niknaks and gifts. It is a very touristy area but lean into it! And there are some lovely places to eat in traditional hanok houses. I particularly enjoyed going to a traditional tea house.
VISIT IKSEONDONG
Ikseondong is the hipster heart of Seoul. It’s a area of traditional hanok buildings that have been turned into trendy shops, cafes and restaurants. There is great food in this area, though you might end up having to queue for places. Some of my favourite meals were here, and there was good Mexican food if you need a break from Korean food on your trip. There’s also a great selection of cafes with good views and nice atmospheres, so it’s a really great place to get a ridiculous coffee and cake and do some people watching.
GO SHOPPING IN MYEONGDONG
As well as Ikseondong and Insadong, there are some great places to go shopping in Seoul. Myeongdong is a particularly good place to go, especially for beauty products. Olive Young is Korea’s equivalent of Boots, and look out for branches for Korean beauty brands like Banila, Skin Food and Laniege. Top tip – if you’re going to buy brands, go to the specific brands shops, as they tend to give you lots of testers and freebies. There are some massive department stores in Myeondong, with Lotte Young Plaze and Shinsegae being the most notable. They’re expensive though and mainly full of labels (Koreans love fashion labels). Also it’s worth knowing that there is a great cat cafe in Myeongdong, called Cats Playground with some of the fluffiest floofs I’ve ever seen.
WALK ALONG THE CHEONGGYECHEONG TO GWANGJANG MARKET
One of my favourite walks was along the Cheonggyecheong, a little stream that has a lovely path alongside. It starts in the centre of Seoul and goes East through the city all the way down to the Hangang river. Along the way, it goes past Gwangjang market, which is a BRILLIANT place to get food. Probably the best place in Seoul for streetfood, actually.
GET UP TO THE SEOUL TOWER
The Seoul Tower was one of my favourite sights to see as I moved around the city. It made my heart leap whenever I saw it. It’s right in the heart of the city and the hike up to the top of Namsan is not too strenuous and along massive well-maintained pavements. (You can also get the bus up there too). The area at the top is covered in love locks, and again there are cafes, some little shops, and places to get good views over Seoul.
GO HIKING
If you’ve read any other bits of my blog you’ll know that hiking was one of my favourite things to do in Seoul. The great thing is, it is SO easy to get to the mountains by just a short journey on the metro, or even in the city itself. My top hikes were Gwanac (south of the city) – see this blog post – and Bukhansan national park, which is just metro ride out of the city too, aim for Dobongsan station. They’re super accessible, the paths are clear, signs are easy to follow (in Korean and English) and there are loads of people around.
Two other notable hikes in the centre of the city are Inwangsan, a short and easy-to-follow route and the only hike you can do at night time, and Bugaksan, another shortish walk where you have to wear a security pass because of a previous assassination attempt by North Korean insurgents! Both routes follow parts of the Seoul City Wall around the north of the city, with the palaces and Blue House (president’s house) in view. In general for hiking, I found koreatodo.com to be the most helpful website.
CYCLE IN HANGANG PARK
Seoul is a busy and active place! One way to get away from the cars and traffic but keep active is by cycling along the Han River. There are fantastic cycle paths (or walking paths if that’s what you prefer). Download the Seoul Bike app (green and black circles in the logo) and use it to hire a public bike. The app can be a bit frustrating to use but it makes it very easy to find bikes and you can rent them using QR codes. Plus it’s super cheap, only ₩5000 for the whole day. I’ve wished I could hop back to a cycle along the Han river so many times.
VISIT A PARK FOR A WALK OR A PICNIC
Seoul is full of parks and nice places to walk. To be honest, I wouldn’t say they’re absolute must-dos, but if you’re looking for a bit of a breather and a relax, you could do worse than visiting one of these. I liked Seoul Forest, Children’s Grand Park and the Olympic Park. Yeouido is nice for a picnic by the river (a very Seoul-ite thing to do, especially if you’re drinking beer and eating fried chicken). My absolute favourite place to walk was Seokchon lake (also good for running). 2 loops round is about 5km. It was especially lovely in the cherry blossoms, and felt a bit Christmassy too. And in the summer I saw turtles in the lake!
GET SOME GANGNAM STYLE
Admit it, as soon as you hear Gangnam, you think of that song. Try not to sing it here, it’s a bit embarrassing! Gangnam is a modern area of Seoul with lots of shops and restaurants. You have to go really, just walk around the streets and see what you find. Walk along the main street, but remember to also go one street back to see more interesting things (this is true of basically everywhere in Korea). In Gangnam there are kareoke places, photo booth studios (more fun than it sounds) and some great stationery stores. Make sure to try some of the character stores like Line Friends and Kakao Friends, and my favourite shop ArtBox.
VISIT A TEMPLE
There are lots of lovely temples all over Seoul. Big ones, small ones. Busy ones, serene ones. Lots of them are up in the mountains because Buddhist monks were banned from cities for about 600 years. You’ll probably come across shrines or temples when you go hiking. In the city, my favourite temple to visit was Bongeunsa.
There are lots of buildings to explore, and when I visited the whole place was streaming with lanterns. You can even do a temple stay here where you stay overnight. I found Bongeunsa to be a very serene place the first time I visited (around new year) and a very fun place when I visited around Buddha’s birthday (in May) with music, dancing, and big crowds.
It’s not far from the Gangnam area and it’s right opposite the Starfield COEX mall (drop in here for more shopping and to relax with a book in the Starfield library, a public space where you can take your time reading with coffee and cake).
EAT SOME CAKE
You’re probably getting the idea by now that coffee, cake and cafes are BIG in Korea. They really have got cafe culture down to a fine art. The cafes can be beautiful and quirky with different themes, characters, indoor trees, waterwheels, or look like a cartoon. There’s big cookies, fruity cronuts, cakes that look like a piece of art. There’s swirly coffees, artisanal flat whites, vanilla lattes, matcha lattes. You have a coffee in one, then hop over to the next one and spend the whole day there. The cafe culture is phenomenal and I really wish we had more of it in London. Above I’ve mentioned lots of areas with nice cafes, especially Insadong, Ikseondong and Bukchon. But my favourite areas to go cafe hopping were Hongdae and Yeonam.
Hongdae is near the university in the west of Seoul and is home to the Harry Potter cafe (great fun but quite expensive) as well as lots of others to try. Yeonam is just a little further west (walkable from Hongdae) and has the cartoon cafe you might know from Netflix’s To All The Boys I Loved Before, Yeonnam-Dong 223-14 (the cafe’s name and its address) and another cafe I particualrly liked called Gifted, which is a big pink cafe that looks like a present. I’d recommend just going for a walk around the area and choosing a cafe that calls out to you. And then another. And then another…
BUSAN
If you want to head outside of Seoul on your trip, Busan is a good place to start. You can fly down from Seoul Gimpo airport (less than 1 hour) but I’d suggest taking the train, as train travel is cheap, clean and enjoyable, plus you get to see Korea go past your window.
The things I enjoyed doing most in Busan were following the trail and seeing the art in Gamcheon culture village, dipping my toes in the sea on Haeundae beach, walking along the boardwalk along the sea and around the coast, and visiting the jjimjilbang in Shinsegae department store, Spa Land. It’s the largest jjimilbang in Korea, and it’s basically a spa with so many different rooms to wash, warm up, soak your feet and relax. Beomeosa is a temple in Busan that I enjoyed visiting, though I wonder say it’s a must-visit if you’ve already seen temples elsewhere. Though you could consider booking a temple stay as your Busan accommodation. Read more about Busan on my Busan blog post.
JEJU
Jeju is Korea’s holiday island, off the southern coast of the country. It’s also very easy to fly to from Seoul. The best activities to do in Jeju are hike, eat oranges and enjoy the volcanic landscape. Read my Jeju blog post for more information. I did enjoy Jeju, but personally I preferred Busan.
GYEONGJU
I was totally bewitched by Gyeongju when I visited. It’s a historically significant small city in the south of Korea, only about an hour’s drive from Busan. I’d never heard of it before but a colleague recommended it, and I’m so glad she did. It’s packed full of Silla-era history (1st-7th century) and is full of historic mounds were the old kings and queens are buried. One of them has been excavated and you can go inside and see the treasures. As a history nerd, I loved it, and I thought the city in general had a great atmosphere, being built around historically significant houses, bridges and tombs.
I also enjoy my bus trip out to see Bulguksa temple and Seokguram grotto, built up in the mountainside with a big Buddha inside. Again, read my Gyeongju blog post for more information.
So where will you be going in Korea? I’d love to know! Going for cherry blossom? Read more here.
For tips about food read these blogs too
Songs of Travel 