How Many Days Do You Need in South Korea?

Three lengths of trip

Almost every first trip to Korea is one of three lengths: focused, comfortable or extended. Days mean calendar days in the country, from the day you land to the day you fly.

Focused: up to six days

Five days in Seoul is a whole trip, and it shows the city's two faces side by side. There is the royal guard changing at Gyeongbokgung, and the king's garden behind Changdeokgung, where paths wind past pavilions and a lotus pond. There is a day at the edge of the divided peninsula at the DMZ, and a day inside K-pop, from a dance class to Hongdae's buskers after dark.

In the National Museum, a quiet room holds two bodhisattvas cast in deep thought. Evenings are for the Han River, on the grass with the people who live there, while the fountain plays off Banpo Bridge.

Our Seoul in five days keeps one bed for the whole stay and gives each day one main thing, with room around it. From Europe the flight takes the best part of a day each way, so five days is the shortest trip we would suggest: a Seoul trip rather than a tour of Korea, and none the worse for it. Jeju in four days, our other short route, is built to be added to a mainland trip.

Comfortable: a week to ten days

Add three or four days and the train takes you into an older Korea, and then to the sea. Gyeongju was the capital of the Silla kingdom for nearly a thousand years, and it is often called a museum without walls. Royal tombs rise like green hills among the streets. On the mountain above the town stand the stone stairways of Bulguksa and, higher still, the granite Buddha of Seokguram, facing east towards the sea.

Then Busan, the port: painted houses stacked up the hill at Gamcheon, the fish market at Jagalchi, and Haedong Yonggungsa, a temple on the rocks with the waves below.

Our South Korea in a week takes them in that order in eight days: Seoul three nights, Gyeongju two, Busan two. Two nights is what lets each place give its best, an evening and a full day before you move on.

Ten days lets the same south-east go slower still. A Different Path, our ten days for the inner journey, sleeps in the scholars' village at Hahoe in a bend of the river, spends a night inside the monastery at Haeinsa, and gives Gyeongju four nights, one of its days with nothing in it at all. What a comfortable trip leaves for another time is the island and the west.

Extended: eleven days or more

From about eleven days, Korea opens out. The south-west, the old province of Jeolla, is known to Koreans as the country's kitchen. In Jeonju you can sleep under the tiled roof of a hanok and eat bibimbap in the city it is named after; at Damyang the bamboo forest rustles high over the paths; Mokpo is the old port at the end of the railway.

Then Jeju, the volcanic island: a lava tube you walk inside, the sunrise crater at Seongsan, and the coast of the haenyeo, the women who dive for shellfish without breathing gear. Our South Korea in two weeks goes this way, and takes the ferry to the island as islanders always have. Or join two of our routes: the week ends in Busan, about an hour's flight from Jeju, and Jeju in four days picks up there. That makes eleven days, flying home through Seoul.

Extra days buy depth as well as distance: reach more of the country, or add a night in Gyeongju, a second stay in Seoul or two nights at a temple, and notice more of fewer places. Neither is the lesser trip. Even two weeks leaves something for another visit: our fortnight gives up Gyeongju and Busan, and no route of ours yet reaches the east coast.

Counting the days that are yours

Some days go to getting somewhere. In Korea they are short: landing, flying home and each train take part of a day; Jeju's flights and ferry take a little more.

These are our estimates, from the journey times in Getting around South Korea and the shape of our routes. A week by train still leaves you most of your days.

Getting the best of your days

The same few habits make a short trip feel unhurried and a long one feel full. Each comes from our itineraries' research.

If you have less time, or more

With less time

1. Keep the reason you are going. If it is Seoul, keep Seoul whole.
2. Move down a length: from two regions to one, or from the south-east to Seoul alone.
3. Drop Jeju first. It costs two flights, or a flight and a ferry.
4. Choose your flight times. A morning landing gives you an afternoon in Seoul; a late flight home gives you a last morning.
5. Cut bases before you cut nights. Two nights in each of two cities beats one night in each of four.

What we would not do is squeeze the classic week into five days with early trains: Seoul alone is the better holiday.

With more time

1. Add nights where you already are. A third night in Gyeongju does more than a new town.
2. Leave one day with nothing in it, as A Different Path does in Gyeongju.
3. Then add one region the shorter trip left out: Jeju first, then the south-west.
4. Take a slower way through: the KTX-Eum up the east coast, or the cycle path from Seoul to Busan.
5. Only then add special interests: a temple stay, a hiking day, a food trail.

Now choose a realistic route

With a length in mind, choose a route that fits it. Our South Korea itineraries compare five we think are realistic. Two are focused: Seoul in five days and Jeju in four days. Two are comfortable: South Korea in a week, at eight days, and A Different Path, at ten. One is extended: South Korea in two weeks. Each keeps one-night stops few, checks the weekday closures, and says plainly what it leaves out. Before you commit, check your flight times against the itinerary you choose.