Five Days in Seoul - Access Seoul

The Junghwajeon hall framed in a palace gateway, with visitors in hanbok on the steps — Photograph by ddol-mang, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0

Five days covers all five palaces, a proper section of wall, the river, and one day outside the city — with enough slack that a wet afternoon does not wreck the plan.

The plan

Days 1–3 — As above.
Day 4, morning — Deoksugung at City Hall — the small palace where Joseon wood stands next to the 1910 stone of Seokjojeon, with the financial district behind both. Then the stone-wall road round the outside.
Day 4, midday — Gwanghwamun Square and the two exhibition halls underneath the statues, which are free and which almost nobody realises are there.
Day 4, afternoon — Gyeonghuigung — free, fragmentary, and usually empty. Twenty minutes, and the point is the emptiness. The Seoul Museum of History next door is also free.
Day 4, evening — The Han river parks at Yeouido or Banpo. Order fried chicken to a spot on the grass, which is what the city itself does.
Day 5 — A day trip — see below.

The empty courtyard of Gyeonghuigung under a deep blue sky, with nobody in it — Photograph by Johnny Silvercloud, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0

⭐ Day five is where a nearby city earns its place. Suwon is about forty minutes from Seoul Station on line 1, on an ordinary T-money tap with no booking, and Hwaseong fortress has nearly six kilometres of walkable wall. It is the easiest real day trip from Seoul and the least visited good thing near it.

Gwanghwamun Square looking down Sejong-daero between the office towers — Photograph by 螺钉, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

What this plan is built around

Not a list of sights, but the constraints: Gyeongbokgung closes on Tuesday while Changdeokgung, Changgyeonggung, Deoksugung and Jongmyo close on Monday; Jongmyo is guided-tour-only except on Saturdays and Culture Day; the Huwon garden must be booked ahead and is capped; and the last train goes around midnight, which is the only hard deadline in a city where nothing else shuts.

The cut stone blocks of the Seoul City Wall with a gate beyond it — Photograph by Korea.net / Korean Culture and Information Service (Jeon Han), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0

Other lengths

3 daysThree Days in Seoul A weekA Week in Seoul 1 dayOne Day in Seoul

Checked on 5 September 2026. Closing days, ticket structures and booking requirements change — confirm before you travel. All sixteen sights, one page each, in Landmarks & Sights.