Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Historic sites & memorials
서귀포시
Between fields of potatoes and garlic stands a row of low, grass-covered humps. Get closer and you see open concrete mouths: hangars built to hide Japanese fighter planes. Alddreu means "the lower plain" in the Jeju dialect, and on this pl…
Historic sites & memorials
여수시
In Sijeon-dong, Yeosu, between apartment blocks, a stone-walled basin still fills with seawater. This was a shipyard from the Goryeo period onwards and is known as the place where Admiral Yi Sun-sin and General Na Dae-yong built turtle shi…
Historic sites & memorials
여수시
On a hill in Yeosu's old town, Jinnamgwan is Korea's largest single-storey wooden government building, a hall held up by a forest of pillars. It stands on the site of the Jeolla Left Naval Command, Admiral Yi Sun-sin's headquarters during…
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.…
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…
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…
Historic sites & memorials
부산
At first glance Yeongdo Bridge, linking Nampo-dong with Yeongdo island in Busan, looks like any city bridge, but at set times its landward span slowly tilts up into the sky. Opened in 1934, it was Korea's first bridge connecting an island…
Historic sites & memorials
영월군
Jangneung in Yeongwol, Gangwon Province, is the tomb of King Danjong, the 6th king of Joseon. It tells the story of a boy king who lost his throne to his uncle and died in exile, and of a local official who buried him at the risk of his ow…
Historic sites & memorials
영월군
Cheongnyeongpo is the riverside spot in Yeongwol where the deposed boy-king Danjong was sent into exile. The Seogang River loops around three sides and a steep cliff closes off the fourth, so although it is attached to the mainland you can…
Historic sites & memorials
영주시
At the foot of Sobaeksan, the clear Jukgyecheon stream runs through a grove of tall pines, and beside it stands a cluster of low tiled buildings. Sosu Seowon in Yeongju was the first seowon, or private Confucian academy, in Korea, and the…
Historic sites & memorials
군산시
On the road in front of Gunsan's inner harbour stands a red-brick building crowned with three pointed towers. This is the former main building of the Gunsan Customs, opened in 1908: a modern government office built by the Korean Empire bef…
Historic sites & memorials
완도군
The small island of Jangdo, just off Wando, was the base of Cheonghaejin, the maritime garrison founded by Jang Bogo, who dominated East Asian waters in the 9th century. A wooden bridge from Jangjwa-ri village takes you straight onto the i…
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…
Historic sites & memorials
울산
The Bangudae Petroglyphs are prehistoric carvings of whales, hunters and animals on a cliff above the Daegokcheon stream near Ulsan. Some whales are rendered so precisely that you can tell the species apart, which is extremely rare in rock…
Historic sites & memorials
원주시
On Wonil-ro in the old centre of Wonju, a two-storey gate with red pillars stands right beside the traffic. This is Pojeongnu, the main gate of Gangwon Gamyeong, the office from which a royal governor ran the whole of Gangwon Province for…
Historic sites & memorials
익산시
The Mireuksa Temple Site in Iksan is the ground of the largest Buddhist temple of the Baekje kingdom, founded under King Mu, and it holds the Mireuksa Stone Pagoda, the oldest and largest stone pagoda surviving in Korea. Today only the pag…
Historic sites & memorials
익산시
On a low hill in Wanggung-myeon, Iksan, a single five-storey stone pagoda rises from a wide expanse of grass. Only the pagoda stands today, but this was the site of a royal palace built under King Mu of Baekje (r. 600–641). Its unusual sto…
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…
Historic sites & memorials
장성군
Piramseowon is a Confucian academy founded to honour the scholarship and virtue of Kim In-hu (1510–1560), a Neo-Confucian scholar of the mid-Joseon period. Kim was the only scholar from the Honam region ever enshrined in the National Confu…
Historic sites & memorials
부산
Rows of low headstones line the lawns of Nam-gu in Busan, and above them fly the flags of twenty-two nations. The United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Korea (UNMCK) is the only UN cemetery in the world, the resting place of about 2,300 serv…
Historic sites & memorials
전주시
In the heart of Jeonju Hanok Village, beyond a red spiked gate, lies a shrine to the very start of the Joseon dynasty. Gyeonggijeon houses the royal portrait of King Taejo (Yi Seong-gye), who founded Joseon. Jeonju was the ancestral seat o…
Historic sites & memorials
전주시
In the middle of downtown Jeonju, beside the busy Chunggyeong-ro, stands a large tile-roofed building. Jeonju Pungpaejigwan, usually called Jeonju Gaeksa, was the official guesthouse where visiting officials and envoys were received and lo…
Historic sites & memorials
정읍시
Most seowon, Joseon-era Confucian academies, were built in quiet scenic spots away from villages, but Museong Seowon in Chilbo-myeon, Jeongeup, sits right in the middle of a village. It began as a shrine to the late-Silla scholar Choe Chi-…
Historic sites & memorials
제주시
In the middle of Jeju's old town, a pavilion with long, low eaves looks out over a square. Gwandeokjeong, built in 1448 as an archery training ground for soldiers, is one of the oldest buildings on Jeju. For almost six centuries the square…