Seoul

About

Seoul, officially Seoul Special Metropolitan City, is the capital and largest city of South Korea, and the largest city in the whole of Korea. The broader Seoul Metropolitan Area, encompassing Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, emerged as the world's sixth largest metropolitan economy in 2022, behind New York, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Paris, and London, and hosts more than half of South Korea's population. Although Seoul's population peaked at over 10 million, it has gradually decreased since 2014, standing at about 9.6 million residents as of 2024. Seoul is the seat of the South Korean government.

Summary excerpted from the Wikipedia article Seoul, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Text may be clipped or paraphrased to fit this page.

Why visit

Visit Seoul for music, theater, and performance. In Seoul, the strongest material is where museums, streets, religious buildings, markets, performance spaces, food, or nearby landscapes explain the surrounding region. A good itinerary should stay selective. A good route in Seoul begins with one serious site and adds smaller stops only when they clarify the same area. The result is a day in Seoul that can be followed, remembered, and adjusted. If Seoul has useful day trips or nearby landscape, use them to widen the context rather than to overload the schedule.

When to avoid

Do not expect Seoul to behave like one enclosed cultural district. Use Seoul with the basics confirmed first: opening days, tickets, transport, and realistic distances. For Seoul, the map may look tighter than the day feels. The route should leave enough slack for closures, delays, and the distance between neighborhoods.

The next week in Seoul

7-day forecast from Open-Meteo. UV badges flag days when sun protection matters (3 and above is moderate; 8 and above is risk territory for unprotected fair skin within 30 minutes).

Year-round climate

Monthly highs, lows, and rainfall (long-term averages, NASA POWER).

Airports near Seoul

3 commercial airports within 100 km. Closest is Gimpo International Airport (GMP) at 17 km.

Getting around Seoul

Public-transit operators within 8 km of the city center. Click through to each operator’s site for routes, fares, and tickets.

Operators and modes aggregated by TransitLand from individual transit-agency GTFS feeds. Route classifications (subway / tram / rail / bus / etc) come from each feed’s GTFS route_type codes.