Family holiday to Korea

[toycat]

We're planning a 10 night family holiday to Korea next year, likely to Seoul and Busan. Thinking Jeju Island might be a step too far travelling with a preteen, but just wondering if there are any easy trips we could make outside of these two cities for day trips? Also how best to split the 10 nights if travelling from UK

Seoul is fabulous, but personally not that keen on Busan. IMO Gyeongju is much more interesting- it’s about 2 hours by train so doable as a long day trip.
jeonju is also a possibility, but there is also a Hanok village in Seoul.
my dcs loved Jeju island and I would opt for this over Busan.
my dd loved dressing up in a hanbok and it entitles the wearer to free admission to Gyeongbokgung place.

You can do a day trip to the demilitarised zone from Seoul, not amazing but still worth a visit

Agree about visiting Gyeongju - not far from Busan (a couple of hours) so could in with your itinerary. Seoraksan in the north east is also beautiful.

When we were in Japan we were contemplating taking the over night ferry for a day trip to Korea. Didn't bother in the end but could be something to consider xX

Oh it’s all lovely!! We stayed In Seoul in an amazing hotel called l’escape hotel. We did a tour of Seoul’s via get your guide which was good it’s huge so even though the metro is great everything takes ages. We did the trip to the DMZ it’s a very long day and the tour we were in didn’t give a lot of information but is a must do I guess and very sad.
we went up to the tower can’t remember the name I really wouldn’t do that again took absolutely ages because of queues for the cable cars.
the bullet train from Seoul to Busan was fantastic easy to book on korail use the Korean website you can only book about a month advance.
i loved Busan we stayed in Hyundai’ lovely beach and walks . The trad village is lovely. We did a day trip to gyongae again a long day but really interesting.
then we flew to Jeju island so did about 4 nights in each place. Jeju island is huge so without a car quite difficult to do on your own. It’s beautiful but we stayed in the grand josun which was a lovely hotel fantastic pools but absolutely nowhere to walk to so a bit stuck in the hotel for food and very £££

we loved it there I’m not sure how long you’ve got and we didn’t have any kids but there were loads of families in Busan . The josun hotels did really good offers for tourists so maybe worth looking at.
happy to give any other info if that’s helpful?

This is all super useful info, thanks so much!

Yes with Jeju Island I'd love to go but on balance without a car it might be tricky. It'll be the first long haul flight we've done in way over a decade so are building in a couple of days to recover in Seoul.

Gyeongju sounds like a great day trip - would be good to see some older architecture. Wondering if there would be enough to keep kid's attention?

We were also considering the ferry from Busan to Osaka as been to Japan before (it has baths and karaoke in board 😁), but unfortunately we have only a couple of weeks holiday to play with!

We are shortly going to Seoul for our 3rd time, to do 2 weeks of volunteer work teaching English (me and my 17 Yr old). The first time we spent 2.5 weeks there where we visited Seoul, Gangneung, Daegu, Busan, Gwangju and Jeju. Our second visit we only stayed in Seoul for 11 days but had day trips to Gangwon and Suwon which were both very easy to get to using their standard trains.
I did the drive from Seoul to Busan on the first visit so not sure how long a train would take, but Daegu may be possible, so it's worth a look. Maybe look at Everland as a day trip from Seoul, then there's things like Nami Island that could be nice, depending on time of year and the age of your kids.

We've just been to South Korea over the Easter break, 11 nights. Loved every moment and would love to go back for a longer visit, the only dilemma would be whether to revisit the same places or try new ones.

We did 2 nights Seoul (the first day was mostly getting over the journey), 2 nights Gyeongju, 3 nights Busan, 2 nights Jeonju and then back to Seoul for the last 2 nights. So kind of alternating big city-smaller city-big-small-big. All done with trains and coach. Every place had a different but wonderful feel, Gyeongju and Jeonju had gorgeous traditional architecture, also we liked Busan (the sky capsules are the cutest thing) more than Seoul but it was a close thing!

Our DC are late teens which might make a difference, hard to say how a younger child would like the balance of destinations we did.

The sky capsules look fab! I'm drawn to Busan for the seaside for our kid.

Is Lotte World worth a visit? Thinking it might be good to spend a full day there