Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Theme parks
과천시
Seoul Land is an amusement park inside Seoul Grand Park, at the foot of Mt. Cheonggyesan in Gwacheon. It opened in May 1988, just before the Seoul Olympics, and is often described as Korea's first theme park. It is usually less crowded tha…
Mountains & peaks
동두천시
A short walk from Soyosan Station on Seoul Metro Line 1, Soyosan is a rocky mountain nicknamed the "little Geumgangsan of Gyeonggi". At 587 m it is not high, but six sharp peaks ring the valley like a horseshoe, and the full ridge loop is…
Mountains & peaks
의정부시
Suraksan is a 638 m granite mountain on the border of Nowon-gu in Seoul and the cities of Uijeongbu and Namyangju in Gyeonggi Province. You can start hiking straight from a subway station, yet the summit area is a ridge of bare boulders th…
Fortresses
수원시
Hwaseong Fortress in Suwon was built by King Jeongjo of Joseon between 1794 and 1796, and its walls still wrap around the old centre of the city for 5.74 km. Gates, watchtowers and artillery posts follow one another along the ramparts, so…
Gardens & parks
가평군
On the slopes of Chungnyeongsan in Gapyeong, The Garden of Morning Calm takes its name from an old epithet for Korea, "the land of the morning calm". Professor Han Sang-kyung of Sahmyook University's horticulture department designed it him…
Theme parks
용인시
Everland in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, is South Korea's largest theme park. It is much more than rides: a zoo with pandas and big cats, gardens with seasonal flower festivals and the Caribbean Bay water park all belong to the same resort.…
Historic sites & memorials
여주시
Godalsa Temple Site is a vast former temple ground at the foot of Hyemoksan in Bungnae-myeon, Yeoju. Founded in 764, Godalsa grew into a major temple under the protection of the Goryeo kings, yet nobody knows exactly when or why it closed.…
Churches & monasteries
여주시
Most Korean temples hide deep in the mountains, but Silleuksa in Yeoju leans against a rocky bluff right on the bank of the South Han River. A Goryeo-era brick pagoda overlooking the water, a marble multi-storey pagoda and the stupa of the…
Historic sites & memorials
여주시
In Yeoju lies Yeongneung, the tomb of King Sejong the Great, creator of the Korean alphabet, and his wife Queen Soheon. It was the first Joseon royal tomb where a king and queen were buried together under one mound, and the same grounds al…
Nature parks
가평군
Yeoninsan in Gapyeong is a mountain with a story in its name. It had no name of its own until Gapyeong County held a naming contest, and since 1999 it has been called Yeoninsan, "Lovers' Mountain", meant as a place where love comes true. W…
Historic sites & memorials
연천군
Spread over a wide hill above the Hantan River, the Jeongok-ri site is Korea's best-known Palaeolithic site. The hand axes found here have the same shape as the Acheulean tools of Europe and Africa, and they were the first such finds in Ea…
Fortresses
오산시
A ring of walls encircles the top of Doksan, a low hill in Jigot-dong, Osan. This is Doksanseong, the fortress General Gwon Yul held with 20,000 troops during the Japanese invasions of the 1590s. Its great weakness was a lack of water, and…
Coast & islands
시흥시
The name ends in "-do", the Korean word for island, but Oido has not been an island for a long time. Salt pans laid out on its mudflats under Japanese colonial rule, followed by later land reclamation, joined it to the mainland, and today…
Historic sites & memorials
용인시
Between the high-rise apartment blocks near Sanghyeon Station on the Sinbundang Line stands a Confucian academy founded in 1605. Simgokseowon honours Jo Gwang-jo (1482–1519), the reform-minded scholar who led a drive to remake government u…
Gardens & parks
성남시
Yuldong Park wraps around a reservoir tucked among low wooded hills on the eastern edge of Bundang, Seongnam. The lakeside path is about 2.5 km long and takes around 40 minutes at an easy pace, with lawns, a book-themed garden and a reed b…
Churches & monasteries
의왕시
Cheonggyesa is a Jogye Order temple set in the woods on the southern slopes of Cheonggyesan in Uiwang. One family looked after it for nearly 500 years from the Goryeo period, it is where Master Gyeongheo, who revived Korean Seon Buddhism i…
Gardens & parks
고양시
Ilsan Lake Park was created when the Ilsan new town was built: planners filled a stretch of empty land with water to make an artificial lake. The park covers about 1.03 million m², of which the lake alone takes up about 300,000 m², with wa…
Historic sites & memorials
파주시
Imjingak is a visitor site on the banks of the Imjin River in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, created in 1972 to console people who cannot return to their hometowns because of the division of Korea. The Mangbaedan altar, the Freedom Bridge and a…
Coast & islands
화성시
Jebudo is an island the sea swallows its road to twice a day. The 2.3 km causeway linking it to the mainland lies below the high-tide line, so when the tide comes in the road disappears under water for three to four hours at a time. Drivin…
Mountains & peaks
남양주시
Rising in the middle of Namyangju, Cheonmasan stands 812 m according to its summit stone, making it one of the higher peaks you can reach from eastern Seoul by train. True to its name, which means "the mountain that touches the sky", it is…
Mountains & peaks
남양주시
Rising on the border of Sudong-myeon in Namyangju and Gapyeong County, Chungnyeongsan (879 m) has a story in its very name. Legend says that Yi Seong-gye, the future founder of the Joseon dynasty, came hunting here at the end of the Goryeo…
Historic sites & memorials
파주시
In a pine forest in Tanhyeon-myeon, Paju, lie King Injo, the 16th king of Joseon, and his first queen, Queen Inyeol. Add the story of a king who lived through the Manchu invasion and the humiliation at Samjeondo to the tale of a tomb moved…
Nature
포천시
Sheer granite cliffs drop into an emerald pool at Pocheon Art Valley, which was once a stone quarry. For almost three decades, hard and handsomely patterned Pocheon granite was cut here; after the quarry was abandoned, the city turned it i…
Museums
용인시
The Korean Folk Village in Giheung-gu, Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, is an open-air folk museum and traditional culture theme park. Opened on 3 October 1974, it was Korea's first open-air folk museum and recreates a late Joseon village on abo…