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Seoul

Seoul pulses with an electric energy that fuses ultramodern skyscrapers with centuries-old temples tucked between neon-lit streets. This is a city of sharp contrasts — where you'll find yourself in a gleaming subway station one moment and wandering through a quiet Buddhist sanctuary the next, the smell of street food (steamed dumplings, spiced rice cakes) pulling you toward the next alley. Seoul's scale is staggering, yet it feels navigable and intensely alive, a place where tradition and cutting-edge innovation don't clash but somehow coexist.

CountrySouth Korea
RegionSeúl
LanguageKorean
CurrencyWon (₩)
Where it is
South Korea · Seúl

Roughly where Seoul sits.

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From the magazine

What we wrote about Seoul

The map tells you where. These pieces tell you when to go, whether the place is for you, and what nobody mentions.

Read the Seoul guideA capital founded inside a ring of mountains.
01When to go1
63% of the rain falls in three months.

Seoul has four genuine seasons, with January at two degrees below zero and August at thirty. But what really decides when to go is not the temperature: it is that 892 of the 1,418 millimetres of annual rain fall between June and August. Outside that window, the city is a different place.

8 min
02Made for you1
For the traveler whose day starts at midnight.

Seoul has a night bus network whose routes were drawn by analysing three billion call records to work out where people actually were at two in the morning. That is a fair summary of the city: here the night is not a leftover from the day, it is a time slot with infrastructure of its own.

9 min
03Worth knowing1
The heated floor that explains how Korea lives.

Taking your shoes off at the door, sitting on the floor, eating at low tables, sleeping on a mat. None of these are loose customs: they are consequences of a heating system that makes the floor the warmest surface in the house. It is called ondol, and you have been walking on it since you landed.

8 min
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