My niece is going to Korea for the first time, so I made her a list of unique things to do in Korea, and now it is yours too. It is for anyone who wants to get past the standard Gyeongbokgung Palace, Myeongdong shopping and fried chicken loop.
Some of it is still touristy. Well. We are tourists. Let us be at peace with that.
10 Unique Things To Do In Korea
1. Eat your way through a market
When people ask what to do on their first day in Korea, I say the same thing every time. Start at a market. Everything in Korea is easier on a full stomach.
Tongin Market in Seochon does the brass-coin lunchbox thing. You swap your cash for old-school brass coins at the Doshirak Cafe upstairs, take an empty tray, then buy your way down the alley one stall at a time, filling up as you go. Coins are ₩500 each, most dishes cost two to four of them, and whatever you do not spend gets refunded. Bring cash. Go at the start of lunch, because the exchange closes when the food runs out. It is a gimmick. I loved it. Order the oil tteokbokki, which is the thing Tongin is actually famous for.
Noryangjin Fish Market is the other one. It runs around the clock, so go early if you can, and watch the auction floor while Seoul is still deciding what to eat that day. The system is simple once someone explains it: you pick something out of a tank downstairs, pay the vendor, then carry it upstairs to have it turned into sashimi at the counters. What nobody mentions is that the restaurant charges its own table and cooking fee on top, so the bill arrives in two parts. Ask for maeuntang at the end, the spicy stew they make from the bones and the head. That part is the reward.
If you want someone to explain what you are looking at (helpful, when the thing in the tank is still moving), book a market food tour. Viator and Get Your Guide both run them.
2. Watch Nanta
It is sold as a cooking show. It is not a cooking show. It is four cooks, a wedding banquet due at six o’clock, a truly unreasonable number of knives, and a percussion set made from kitchen equipment. No dialogue, so no language barrier. Ninety minutes. Worth it.
There are two Nanta theatres in Seoul, one in Myeongdong and one in Hongdae, and they run completely different schedules, so check the day you want before you commit. Seats are allocated in the order bookings come in rather than on the night, so book early if you want to be close. Or late, if being close is exactly the thing you are trying to avoid. There is audience participation.
3. Rent a hanbok and walk into a palace
Turn up at the palace gates in hanbok, and you walk in free. This has been the deal since 2013, and it still stands at Gyeongbokgung, Changdeokgung, Changgyeonggung and Deoksugung, so one rental can cover a whole day of palaces. It does have to be a complete hanbok, jeogori plus skirt or pants. A vaguely traditional-looking dress will not get you past the gate.
The rental shops cluster right outside, roughly ₩10,000 to ₩25,000 depending on how long and how fancy, and they will do your hair too. You will take approximately 400 photos. Budget for that emotionally.
Two things are worth checking first. The palaces each close on one day a week, and the day varies by palace (Gyeongbokgung shuts on Tuesdays). And the changing of the guard runs at around 10 am and 2 pm, free to watch, no ticket required, so time your grand entrance accordingly.
4. Get lost in Insadong
Insadong is the bit of Seoul that still feels handmade. Art galleries, traditional tea houses, calligraphy shops, and Ssamzigil, the mall that spirals you up and around to a rooftop instead of using stairs like a normal building. Anguk Station, exit 6.
Go all the way to the top. That is where the Love Wall is, the one covered in pink tags instead of padlocks, and the Poop Cafe, which is exactly what it sounds like. Fair warning: the cafe has closed. Come back at least once, so confirm it is open before you build an afternoon around drinking out of a toilet-shaped mug.
5. Day trip to Nami Island
Officially, the Republic of Naminara, which issues you a “visa” at the ticket gate and commits fully to the bit. Tree-lined avenues, marshmallows roasted over a fire, small museums, a slow lap of the lake.
Getting there is easier than it sounds. Take the ITX-Cheongchun from Yongsan or Cheongnyangni to Gapyeong, about an hour, then a five-minute taxi or shuttle to the wharf. Entry is around ₩16,000 to ₩19,000 and includes the ferry both ways, which takes about 5 minutes. And if you are travelling that far, stack the day: Petite France, the Garden of Morning Calm and the Gangchon rail bike are all in the same pocket of Gapyeong.
It works in every season, which is inconvenient, because now I want to go back to all four.
6. Take a cooking class
Learning to make jeon, kimchi or bibimbap in someone’s kitchen is the fastest shortcut from eating a culture to understanding it. The better classes start with a walk through a local market, so you learn what you are buying before you learn what to do with it. If you want the quiet version, look for a temple food class instead, cooked the Buddhist way with no garlic, no onion and a great deal more patience than I have.
You also go home with something you can actually cook on a Tuesday night in Melbourne.
7. Do nothing in a neighbourhood
The main sights are the main sights. The neighbourhoods are the reason you come back. Cafes, street eats, art alleyways, laundromats, old men playing baduk. Pick one, spend a whole morning there, and do not look at your itinerary.
If you need a shortlist to start from: Seochon for hanok lanes and bookshops, Ikseon-dong for the narrow ones, Yeonnam-dong for the park strip, Seongsu for old factories that are cafes now.
8. Go to Jeju
Climb Seongsan Ilchulbong for sunrise, learn about the haenyeo (the diving grandmothers who are cooler than all of us), and let the island run at its own pace. It is a different country from Seoul, basically.
The climb costs about ₩5,000 and is 20 to 40 minutes of stairs, or an hour and a half all up once you factor in stopping for photos, which you will. If the stairs are not happening, the coastal path around the base is free and arguably the better view, because from down there you can actually see the peak. The haenyeo dive demonstrations run at the small beach in the early afternoon, weather permitting, and are free. On 1 January, thousands of people crowd up there for the first sunrise of the year.
9. Chase the coffee
Korea takes coffee very seriously, and the good stuff is almost never the international chain on the corner. The old guard is worth the detour: Fritz, which roasts out of a restored hanok in Mapo and has a seal for a mascot, Anthracite, which moved into a former shoe factory in Hapjeong, and Coffee Libre, started by the first Q grader in the country. Then there are the themed cafes that have committed harder than anyone asked them to. Both kinds count.
10. Take the slow train
The KTX will get you anywhere fast, but the local lines are where the trip actually happens. Rice fields, school kids, snack trolleys, someone’s grandmother offering you a tangerine. Book one leg slowly on purpose.
Do it soon, though. The old Mugunghwa trains are being retired route by route and replaced by newer ITX services, and a certain kind of journey is going with them. If you want the properly scenic version, the V-Train crawls through the Baekdudaegan canyon at about 30km/h with windows you can actually open, and the Sea Train runs the east coast between Gangneung and Samcheok in about ninety minutes. Both operate limited services on limited days, so book through Korail well ahead.
Before You Go To Korea
Five things I am reminding my niece about Korea:
- Google Maps barely works in Korea. Download Naver Map or KakaoMap before you land.
- Buy a T-money card at any convenience store. It covers subways, buses and most taxis, and it saves you doing maths at a turnstile.
- 1330 is the Korea Travel Hotline. Free, around the clock, actual humans, in English.
- Markets and palaces all close one day a week, and rarely on the same day. Check the night before, not the morning of.
- Carry cash. Korea is aggressively card-friendly right up until the moment you meet a market stall.
None of this is secret. It is just what I would do again, which is a different list and a better one.
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