What is under Gwanghwamun Square? The Gwanghwamun Square underground is not just a passage to the subway. It is three free museums strung along one basement corridor, and you can walk the whole thing without going back above ground. Everyone photographs the two statues on Gwanghwamun Square. Almost nobody walks down the stairs underneath them. … Read more
Is the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History free? Yes — the permanent exhibitions, the children’s museum, and the 8th-floor rooftop garden are all free, and no reservation is needed. It stays open until 9 PM on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Most people walk straight past this building. It sits on Sejong-daero, two minutes from Gwanghwamun … Read more
Korean real estate agent fees are not whatever the agent says they are. There is a legal ceiling, it is set by city ordinance, and every licensed office in Seoul is required to display it on the wall. Almost no foreign tenant knows this, and agents are not in the habit of volunteering it. The … Read more
The Korean property register is a public document that costs 700 won, takes two minutes to download, and tells you more about whether you will see your deposit again than anything the landlord or the agent will say to you. Most foreign tenants never look at it. Some are never told it exists. Others are … Read more
The Seoul City Wall Museum is free, it is three floors, and it is built into the hillside where the wall actually runs. That last part is the whole point. You read about the fortification upstairs, then you walk out of the door and stand on it. We did the museum first, walked the wall … Read more
Ssamzigil is the building every Insadong guide uses for its cover photo and almost none of them explain. From the street it looks like a craft mall, which it is. What nobody tells you is that it has no floors in the usual sense. It has one path that starts at street level and keeps … Read more
Jogyesa Temple sits in the middle of Seoul’s office district, and you can walk in off the street, without a ticket, and stand under several thousand paper lanterns. One minute away, on the same block, there is a small building where Korea’s modern postal service began and collapsed inside three weeks. Both are free. Most … Read more
There is a theatre inside the National Museum of Korea, and almost nobody who visits the museum knows it is there. We found it the way most families do — by accident. We had a morning session booked at the Children’s Museum, and while walking back across the plaza we passed a building on the … Read more
The best children’s museum in Seoul costs nothing to enter. That is the good news. The complication is that you cannot simply turn up — there is no ticket desk, no queue you can join, and if you arrive without a booking on your phone you will be turned away at the door with your … Read more
Jeonse deposit protection in Korea does not begin when you sign the lease, and it does not begin when you hand over the money. It begins at midnight after you have done two specific things, in a specific order. Miss the order and your deposit — often 300 million won or more for jeonse, 10 … Read more