Updated 29 October 2026
Hiking in Korea: The National Sport Nobody Warns You About
Korea is mostly mountain and almost everybody walks up it. What the trails are like, why the gear looks like that, and how to hike straight out of Seoul.
Beyond the cities
Every guide about Beyond the cities for a trip to South Korea, in one place.
13 guides: Beyond the cities
Updated 26 October 2026
Templestay in Korea: A Night in a Working Monastery
What a Korean templestay involves: the two programme formats, the pre-dawn service, the formal monastic meal, and how to book one that runs in English.
Updated 18 October 2026
Lava Tubes and a Sunrise Crater: Volcanic Jeju in One Day
East Jeju holds a tuff cone rising out of the sea and a lava tube you can walk inside. How to fit both into one day and what to wear underground.
Updated 16 October 2026
Seoraksan in Autumn: The Best Two Weeks in Korea
Granite ridges, a cable car, a temple in a bowl of mountains and a colour front that comes down from the peaks to the valleys over a fortnight in October.
Updated 16 October 2026
Day Trips from Seoul: Six Options and Which Is Actually Worth It
A fortress you walk on top of, an island of tree tunnels, a border you can look across and a Chinatown by the sea, all inside two hours of the city.
Updated 12 October 2026
Intercity Buses in Korea: The Network the KTX Does Not Cover
Korea runs two bus networks alongside its railway and reaches most of what the fast trains miss. Seat classes, terminals and what a night bus really is.
Updated 29 July 2026
Andong: A UNESCO Village, a Mask Dance and Chicken Worth the Journey
A Confucian village in a river bend where an aristocratic clan lived for six hundred years, a satirical masked dance, and the town's two great dishes.
Updated 29 July 2026
Suwon and the Hwaseong Fortress: A Whole Walled City an Hour from Seoul
Nearly six kilometres of eighteenth century fortress wall with a walkway along the top, a palace inside it, and a working Korean city around it.
Updated 23 May 2026
The Jeju Olle Trail: Walking Round an Island in Numbered Pieces
A waymarked coastal network of more than twenty numbered routes circling Jeju, each a day, marked by blue and orange ribbons and a small horse.
Updated 17 May 2026
Climbing Hallasan: The Highest Point in South Korea
A shield volcano in the middle of an island, a crater lake at the top, two long summit trails with cut off times, and a booking system to read first.
Updated 11 May 2026
Skiing in Korea: Short Runs, Long Nights and Very Cheap Lessons
Resorts from about an hour out of Seoul, floodlit slopes until late, a reliable cold winter and equipment hire that costs less than lunch in the Alps.
Updated 11 April 2026
Jeonju: Eight Hundred Hanok and the Home of Bibimbap
The largest surviving hanok district in Korea, a dish the city is credited with inventing, and an alley of makgeolli houses serving food you did not order.
Updated 5 April 2026
Gyeongju by Bike: A Thousand Years of Capital, Flat and Rentable
Royal burial mounds in the middle of town, an observatory, a UNESCO temple in the hills, and a city flat enough that a bicycle is the obvious way round it.