Seoul doesn’t ease you in. It’s a city of 10 million people that operates at full volume from the moment you step off the subway, and the thing that surprised me most wasn’t the scale of it — it was how much I kept finding by going sideways from whatever plan I’d had. A tour that was supposed to end at 8pm ran until midnight. A palace I’d wanted to see was closed on Mondays (my timing, as always, is impeccable). A closed beer hall sent me around the corner to a BBQ spot where I discovered soju bombs and ended up holding court with a 19-year-old Spartan, a German backpacker, an Australian, and a Colombian living in Berlin. Seoul rewards the detour. Every single time.
1
Ride the Subway Everywhere — It’s the Cleanest Underground System You’ll Ever Use
Getting into Seoul from Pangyo on a Sunday morning at 8am, I walked across an empty street (fought every instinct to jaywalk — the locals were waiting patiently at the crosswalk signal despite zero cars in sight, so I followed their lead), descended into the subway, and immediately understood why people rave about Korean public transit. You could eat dinner off the floor of that platform. I’ve been on subways in 20-odd countries, and nothing comes close to the cleanliness here.
One practical note from when I went in 2022: you can’t just swipe a credit card. You need a T-money transit card, which you buy separately and then load with cash — the machine won’t tell you this, and I burned about 15 minutes staring at the screen before the guy working the convenience shop next to the machines took pity on me and explained the system. Buy the card first (around 2,500 won, roughly $2 USD at the time), load it with cash, then you’re set. The signage in the stations was genuinely excellent in English, the trains were on time, and a single ride ran me 1,250 to 1,550 won (about $1 USD) depending on distance. For a city this size, it’s a steal.
2
Do the DMZ Tour — the Tunnel Alone Is Worth the Full Day
My driver Mr. Eric picked me up and got me to the shuttle that runs tourists out to the Demilitarized Zone. Our guide Sadie had what I can only describe as dynamite energy — she made the whole thing feel alive rather than like a history lecture. The Joint Security Area at Panmunjeom was still closed when I went (COVID-related UN restrictions that had been in place for nearly a year at that point — check current access before you book), but what remained on the itinerary was more than enough.
The highlight, without question, was the Third Infiltration Tunnel — one of four covert tunnels the North Koreans dug in attempts to invade the South, this one discovered in 1978. You walk roughly 80 meters down a steep incline (the equivalent of a 25-story building, Sadie told us), and then hunch-walk another 170 meters through a passage so low that every 30 seconds you’d hear a hard thunk of someone’s helmet hitting rock. No cameras allowed inside, so no photos — just the experience of standing 200 meters from the North Korean border, behind three concrete barriers, thinking about what that means. Then you walk back up the 25-story building. I was sweating so badly by the time I emerged that Sadie ran to the desk to grab me paper towels. Worth every drop.
3
Wander Bukchon Hanok Village Without an Agenda
Bukchon is a neighborhood of traditional Korean wooden houses — hanok — that sits between two palaces in central Seoul. My plan had been to walk through the village and then tour the nearby Changdeokgung Palace. The village part delivered completely: narrow lanes, old tile rooflines, little shops and restaurants packed in together, people everywhere. The kind of place where you put your phone away after a while because you’d rather just look.
The palace, however, was closed on Mondays. I showed up, read the sign, laughed at myself, and went back to the hotel to grab my sweat do-rag before the food tour started. The thing is, the village itself doesn’t need the palace as a reason to go. Two hours of walking those streets without a checklist in hand was one of the more enjoyable stretches of the trip. Don’t sprint through it to get somewhere else.
4
Do a Food and Drinking Tour Through the Back Alleys — Five Hours, No Regrets
This was the best single decision I made in Seoul. The group was small: AJ, a program development manager from the East Bay; Montana, an Army Apache helicopter pilot stationed in Korea, with his mom and her boyfriend; and me — the elder statesman at 51. Our guide Mike is Korean by birth, grew up in Chicago and Toledo, studied mechanical engineering at the University of Toledo, lost his job, flew to Seoul for a friend’s wedding, and never went home. He knows every stall and back-alley spot in this city and exactly how much of each thing to order.
We hit a big market first — the kind of place I initially dismissed as tourist crap until I slowed down and realized it was just where people buy everything: linen, hardware, power tools, food. Then came the pajeon (traditional Korean pancake — soybean paste, potatoes, leeks, deep-fried golden), sesame and peanut snacks, beef tartare with live squid and soju, a makgeolli shop where I went for the driest variety on the menu (apparently very unusual — Koreans lean sweet on rice wine), garlic chicken and dried fish at Seoul’s main drinking district, and finally the street vendors set up in front of my hotel who only operate from 6pm to 6am and, as Mike explained, are slowly disappearing because the government stopped issuing new permits years ago. Spicy pork cartilage. Steamed squid. Soju. Terra beer. The tour officially ended and then we stayed for two more rounds anyway.
5
Learn to Drink Soju Properly — Specifically, as a Bomb
My introduction to soju came the night after the DMZ tour, when a young woman in our post-tour group spoke enough Korean to get directions from a BBQ vendor, who pointed us to the restaurant two doors down from the closed German beer hall we’d been hoping to reach. On its own, soju is a sweet, watered-down vodka — pleasant enough. But drop a shot of it into a glass of local beer (the specific brand that evening escapes me, the details of that table do not) and it becomes something worth writing home about.
The Korean approach to drinking is communal in a way that’s easy to get swept up in. You don’t pour your own glass — someone else pours for you, you pour for them. The table I ended up at included Anuja from MSU (19, had no idea what my Michigan hat meant — Sparties), Lisa from Germany (18), Myah from Melbourne (27), and David from Colombia living in Berlin (37). I was 51. We had a genuinely great time. The soju saw to that.
6
Buy a Transit Card Before You Need One and Get Cash from an Airport ATM
This is the practical item, and I’m including it because I watched myself and others fumble these exact things. The subway card situation I already mentioned — cash only, buy and load separately, the machine will not explain this to you. As for ATMs: when I went in July 2022, getting money out in Seoul could be its own adventure depending on which machine you hit. The airport had options that worked reliably for foreign cards; the city was more hit or miss. Pull cash when you see a machine you know works.
Also, regarding entry requirements: when I went in 2022, Americans needed a K-ETA (Korea Electronic Travel Authorization) — a separate app-based approval that cost a small fee and was required before boarding. I nearly didn’t make my flight over this. The situation with K-ETA and entry requirements for Korea has changed multiple times since then, so check the current rules well before you fly — do not rely on what an airline agent told someone else on a different trip. Verify directly with the Korean embassy or the official K-ETA site. Don’t be me standing at LAX refreshing an app with 45 minutes to departure.
7
Stay in the City Center at Least One Night — the Neighborhood Changes After Dark
My first couple of nights were out in Pangyo at the Courtyard Marriott — clean, comfortable, good breakfast — but it’s a 40-minute bus ride from the action. Moving into the Moxy in central Seoul for my last night was the right call. The room was smaller than my bedroom at home despite a “superior king upgrade,” but I needed a crash pad, not a suite. What I got instead was a neighborhood that was completely different from anything I’d seen in the outer district: smell of sewer gas mixing with street food, shops stacked on top of each other, sidewalks being washed down at midnight, the general organized chaos that reminds you you’re actually in Asia.
The street vendors that materialized outside the hotel at 6pm and ran until 6am were exactly the kind of thing you only find when you’re staying close enough to stumble into it. If you’re booking hotels, put at least one night inside the ring — Jongno, Insadong, or the Myeongdong area. The outer districts are fine for a base, but the city rewards proximity. If you want help thinking through the logistics of where to stay relative to what you want to do, drop your itinerary into Ask WildWilliam and I’ll give you a straight answer on how to set it up.