Travel Guide to South Korea: K-Culture, Food & Temples

Seoul, Busan, and the towns in between do different jobs, and a route that treats them as one long list of sights ends up a blur of palaces. Give each place a role, and the country starts to make sense.

Seoul: Palaces and the First Full Day

Almost every route begins in Seoul, and the full-day city pattern is predictable enough to plan around. A Seoul tour usually opens at Jogyesa temple, moves to Gyeongbokgung Palace for the Royal Guard Changing Ceremony, then covers the National Folk Museum before heading out of town.

One detail catches people off guard: on Tuesdays the palace stop becomes Deoksu Palace instead, so if Gyeongbokgung is the reason you came, do not book that day. The Korean Folk Village sits about an hour and a half from the city and holds around 260 types of traditional houses, which fills an afternoon on its own.

Busan: Coast, Beach and Cable Car

Busan is the counterweight to the capital, and most of what you came for sits along the water. Haeundae Beach and Dongbaek Park take a couple of hours, the Songdo Sea Cable Car puts you over the sea rather than beside it, and the UN Memorial Cemetery and Nurimaru APEC House round out a day without much driving.

A Busan tour works well as the halfway point of a loop, since the city sits at the bottom of the country and the routes back north usually run through Gyeongju.

Gyeongju: Tombs and Observatory

Gyeongju holds the Silla-era sights, and they sit close together. The Daereungwon Tomb Complex is a group of grassy burial mounds you walk between, the Cheomseongdae Observatory is a short stop that takes about twenty minutes, and both pair naturally with the temples outside town.

Jeonju and Andong: Hanok Villages

Jeonju Hanok Village keeps around 700 traditional houses, and wandering the lanes on foot is the point rather than any single building. Gyeonggijeon Shrine is in the same town and takes about an hour. Andong Hahoe Folk Village is the other half of the pair: it is UNESCO-listed, people still live there, and Queen Elizabeth II visited it, which is the kind of detail local guides enjoy repeating.

Food changes with the region on this route, and that is the useful part: the same week gives you a city grill, a temple table and a fish market within a few days of each other. Here is what to plan around.

Jeonju Bibimbap

Jeonju is where bibimbap gets taken seriously, and it is the lunch to build the day around. Eat it after walking the hanok lanes, since the village is where the restaurants cluster.

Korean BBQ and Hanjeongsik

Korean BBQ is the meal most visitors already know they want, and it works best as a dinner with a group, since the table fills up with meat, leaves and side dishes. Hanjeongsik is the formal alternative: a set menu built around a spread of small dishes rather than one main plate, which is the version to book when you want to sit for two hours.

Jagalchi Market on the Coast

Jagalchi Market in Busan is the seafood stop of the trip, and the visit runs about two hours at market pace. Go hungry, because this is a market you eat in rather than walk through.

Tea, Sweets and the Boseong Fields

Boseong holds the country's largest green tea plantation, and the rows of bushes are the reason the detour south is worth the drive. Nearby, Baekyangsa Temple runs a tea conversation with a Buddhist monk, which is a seated hour rather than a tasting. If you like doing something with your hands, the sweets-making session with instructors works for children as well as adults.

The cultural half of a Korean trip is easier to plan when you separate the things you visit from the things you do. Temples are visits, while hanbok, tea sessions, and sweets classes are activities with a set time, which is why they shape the day more than another palace stop does.

Bulguksa and Seokguram

Bulguksa is the Silla Buddhist temple outside Gyeongju, and the carved stone relics are what earned it World Heritage status. Seokguram Grotto was built by Kim Dae-Seong during the reign of King Gyeong-Deok, which ran from 742 to 765, and it sits in the hills above the temple.

Hanbok in Jeonju

Wearing hanbok through Jeonju Hanok Village is the photo stop that actually works, because the lanes of traditional houses give you a backdrop rather than a studio wall. It slots into the village walk instead of eating a day, and the all-inclusive loop builds it into the visit rather than leaving it as an extra.

K-Pop Stops Along the Route

K-culture shows up in odd places on this route. Gangneung Hangho Beach has the bus stop used for BTS album jacket photos, and Gwangju is J-Hope's hometown, with his song Ma City taking the May 18 Democratization Movement as its subject. Both stops take minutes, which is the right expectation: they are photo pauses between longer drives, not destinations of their own.

The distances here are shorter than the map suggests, and most of a loop is spent on good roads rather than stuck in traffic. A South Korea tour that circles the country handles that driving for you, and the leg times below are the ones the published itineraries quote.

Do you need to rent a car? Not on a route like this. The stops are close enough together that a coach covers three or four a day, and someone else deals with city traffic while you look out of the window.

The longest runs cross the mountains at the end of the trip, which is why most loops sleep in Pyeongchang rather than pushing back to Seoul in one go.

The season changes two things on this route: how much walking you will enjoy, and whether the mountain day survives the schedule. Palaces, markets and temples run all year, so the calendar mostly decides how the outdoor half feels.

Spring

Spring is the stretch the published itineraries do not flag for crowding, which makes it the easiest season to keep a full circle intact. The walking that Jeonju, Andong, and the temple grounds ask of you stays the same in any month, and the tea terraces at Boseong hold their place on the schedule without a weather caveat.

Summer

Summer runs warm and humid, and that is the review most travelers come back with: carry water, wear light clothing, and expect the walking to feel longer than the distance suggests. The operator also warns that Mt. Seorak may not be visitable in the summer peak because of crowds, so treat the mountain day as the flexible one.

Autumn

Fall is the second half of that same peak warning, and Seorak is where it bites. If the mountain is the reason for your trip, build the loop around a date outside the crowd window rather than hoping the coach gets in.

Winter

Winter puts Pyeongchang on the map for a different reason: it hosted the 2018 Winter Olympic Games, and the drive around the venues is part of the route. The cable car up to Gwongeumseong Fortress is priced at $20 per person and is optional, and the ski jump monorail is another add-on. Cold days also make the indoor stops, the museums, and the tea session a better value than a long outdoor walk.

A first trip to South Korea works better once you accept that the circle is the point and the individual stops are negotiable. Keep the hanok village walk and the temple morning in Gyeongju, because neither can be reproduced in the capital, and keep one full day in Seoul at the end so the last day is not spent rushing toward the airport.

Drop the mountain day if crowds bother you, and trade it for a second Seoul day rather than pushing the coach through a queue. Drop Jeju Island on a one-week trip as well; it appears on the longer routes, which is the right place for it, and trying to bolt it onto five days costs you the south coast.

Rather than stretching a short trip across the whole country, pick the half that matches your interest. The southwest holds the food and the tea fields, the southeast holds the coast and the Silla sights, and the east holds the mountains. If Seoul is all the time you get, the capital alone will keep you busy for several days without a day trip. The rule this guide keeps returning to is simple: fewer stops, more time in each.