A Thread For South Korea (including but not limited to travel advice)

I'm going there this September - one week in Seoul, one in Jeju Island.

Anyone been? Any tips on what I should check out? I remember these types of ILX travel threads being quite useful to me in the past...

Alternatively, we can just talk about the fascinating history, literature, cinema, comics and music of South Korea!

A friend and I sometimes stay up late at night just watching Korean plastic surgery youtubes. The latest fascination has been with nose thread lifting. We have a whole imaginary holiday to SKorea around this planned.

This is probably not what you are looking for in this thread.

Hey Daniel, South Korea is great, you're gonna have a blast!

You should look out for the weather - early September's still gonna be very humid, with lots of rain, so weird as it may sound you should both dress for Summer and carry an umbrella at all times.

Seoul is a huge, sprawling city. People's grasp of English pretty good when compared with Japan - the other South East Asian country I've been to - and restaurants where they don't speak the lingo tend to have lots of picture menus. Lots of cool street markets around. Also lots of fascinating smells, some of delicious food, some of...less savoury things. Definitley the most fragrant city I've been to. Tube system very easy to navigate, and works with a card that you can also use to pay for cabs and at certain convinience stores. You can even get one with your favourite K-Pop idol on it, or with one of the Kakao Friends mascots - emoticon animals that have taken over the culture.

Culturewise the National Museum of Korea is a must-see, gives you a really good breakdown of the country's history. They also have a gorgeous garden surrounding it, but beware of bug bites! The Museum of Modern Art has a good souvenir shop. Museum of the History of Seoul is a bit dry. There's a building that used to be used by the Japanese and then the dictatorship to imprision political dissidents, sobering stuff of course tho I recommend giving the torture section a miss.

You should also check out some of the palaces! Good outdoor venues for when it's sunny out. Get ready to see tons of people - some tourists, some locals - dressed in hanbok, the colourful traditional dress. Huge thing right now.

Eat everything, everywhere. Cold noodles a must. Didn't have many bad dining experiences, really. Do drop by a 7-11 as well for some of the stranger fare - blueberru sandwiches, dried squid with peanut butter.

Warning: there's a right-wing movement abound that believes the current president to be a puppet for North Korea and that the previous prez was wrongfully imprisioned. This translates to a lot of grumpy senior citizens marching up and down Seoul Square every day blasting "Hail To the Chief" and waving US and Israeli flags.

Sounds wonderful. Thinking of going Spring next year.

oh, how was Jeju island? I only know a handful of japanese and one of the phrases is how to ask for cold noodles.

Ended up not going to Jeju because the weather was going to be terrible there - better in Seoul, but we figured even if it weren't the city would be a better place to stay indoors. Did drink a lot of Jeju water tho.

Now avoiding any Jeju scenes in k-dramas to prevent FOMO :/