Explore Korea Now

  Why Your Best Day in Korea Might Happen Outside Seoul Leave Seoul ’s lights for an hour or two and the tempo shifts. Footsteps ease, rice fields replace billboards, and someone—often an older neighbor—asks where you’re from and which local dish you’ve tried. The moment curiosity turns into hospitality , your trip starts to breathe. Seoul is generous with choices: palaces and city walls, museums and towers, even a day trip to the DMZ . It’s a perfect first base. But in the countryside you trade “filling the schedule” for leaving a little blank space . In those empty margins, frogs sing at dusk, a breeze picks up over the paddies, and a stranger’s small kindness redraws your map for the day. The scenery is full of good surprises. A run of old tile roofs ends—and suddenly a modern bridge leaps across a river, or a tall apartment stack rises behind a mountain shoulder. It’s Korea in a single frame: past and present sharing the same picture without crowding each other out. Peopl...

So you’re vegetarian—and you’re heading to South Korea. I know exactly how that feels. When I was planning my trip, I read every blog, watched every vlog, and still had this pit in my stomach: Will I find anything to eat besides white rice and lettuce? The short answer? Yes, absolutely. But it takes a little prep and a lot of curiosity. Let me walk you through what I learned (the easy way and the hard way) so you can enjoy Korea without constantly worrying about your next meal. What Being Vegetarian Means in Korea First, let’s get this out of the way: in Korea, the word “vegetarian” doesn’t always mean what you think it means. Unless you say “no meat, no fish, no seafood, no animal broth,” your bibimbap might still come with anchovy stock or beef toppings. What helped me: I carried a translation card that said exactly what I couldn’t eat in Korean. You can print one from websites like Vegan Korea or use apps like HappyCow that offer phrase translations. I even learned to say: 고기, 생...