Korea and Japan in two weeks: the best fourteen-day route out of Seoul

South Korea is a compact country with a fast train down the middle of it. Seoul, Gyeongju and Busan, with a DMZ day and some unscheduled time, is a complete first visit in ten days. That argument is made in full in South Korea in ten days. Add four days inside Korea and you generally get four pleasant days that dilute an excellent trip. Add four days across the strait and you get a second country, two hours away, that is different in almost every respect that matters.

So this is the two-week route we actually build: ten days in Korea, four or five in Japan, or a seven and seven split for people who want both properly. It is published day by day as Korea and Japan in 14 days.

Why the pairing works

The flight is nothing. Seoul to Fukuoka is about an hour and a quarter. Busan to Fukuoka is under an hour by air, and there is a ferry from Busan that takes around three and a half hours on the fast service and is a genuinely enjoyable way to arrive in a country.

The contrast is the point. People expect Korea and Japan to feel similar and they do not. The food is built on different foundations, chilli and fermented paste against dashi and soy. The cities have opposite temperaments: Seoul is loud, fast, layered and rebuilt, and Kyoto is quiet and deliberate. Even the pace of service is different. Two weeks that moves between them is a comparison rather than a repetition, and travellers remember comparisons.

The seasons line up. Both countries peak in the same two windows, late April to early June and late September to early November, so the trip does not force a compromise on either half.

We have an office on one side of it. GO EAST staffs its own offices in Japan, Vietnam, India and the Philippines. Korea we run through a long-standing partner in Seoul rather than people we employ, and we would rather say that than blur it. On this particular route the second half is picked up by our own Tokyo office, and the handover between them is something we do most weeks.

The route we build most

Days 1 to 4, Seoul

Four nights, not three. The palaces with a guide on one morning, Changdeokgung’s rear garden on a timed ticket, the war memorial, Bukchon and Ikseon-dong and Seochon on foot, Gwangjang market in the evening with someone who can read the stalls, and a day north to the DMZ. Seoul is where this trip earns itself.

Day 5, Seoul to Gyeongju

Two hours by KTX to Singyeongju and a short taxi into town. Arrive at lunch, and spend the afternoon among the burial mounds, which sit in the middle of the town like grassy hills because that is what they are.

Days 6 and 7, Gyeongju

The Silla capital for nearly a thousand years, and the strongest argument for leaving Seoul. Bulguksa, the Seokguram grotto above it, the national museum for two hours, and a night in a hanok. Quiet, low-rise and completely unlike the country you have just come from.

Days 8 and 9, Busan

An hour from Gyeongju. A port city on hills above the water, looser and warmer than Seoul: Jagalchi fish market, the painted terraces of Gamcheon, Beomeosa temple in the pines behind the city, and a bowl of dwaeji gukbap that will change your view of Korean food.

Day 10, Busan to Fukuoka

Fly in under an hour, or take the fast ferry across the strait, which lands you in the middle of Fukuoka rather than at an airport an hour out.

Days 10 to 14, Kyushu

Fukuoka for the yatai food stalls on the river at night, Dazaifu for the shrine and the plum trees, and then either the onsen towns at Yufuin and Beppu, or Nagasaki for a very different twentieth century to the one you saw at the Korean war memorial, or Kumamoto and the Aso caldera. Two bases, not four. Fly home from Fukuoka.

The alternative Japanese half

Kyushu is our default because it is close, underused by foreign visitors and coherent as a four-day block. Two other pairings work.

Kansai. Fly Seoul or Busan to Osaka, then Kyoto and Nara. It is the Japan people picture, and the trade is that four days in Kyoto in a peak week is four days in a crowd. If you have never been to Japan and are unlikely to return soon, take Kansai anyway and accept the crowds.

Tokyo. A two-hour flight from Seoul, and the most direct city-against-city comparison available in Asia. Four days is enough to feel it and not enough to see it, which some people find frustrating and others find like a taster for a return trip.

What we would not do is try to fit Tokyo and Kyoto into the Japanese half. Four days does not carry two Japanese cities plus the rail leg between them, and the result is a fortnight spent in transit.

Splitting the days

The last row matters. If you cannot give the second country four nights, do not go. A two-night hop is an airport day at each end and one real day in the middle.

Which direction to travel

Korea first, then Japan, for two reasons. Korea is the harder of the two to travel independently, so it benefits from being done while you are fresh and while the guiding we build in is doing the most work. And Japan is the easier country to finish in, because arriving tired in a place where every sign is bilingual and every train runs to the minute is a kinder ending.

The exception is money. If your international flights are meaningfully cheaper in the other direction, take them, and we reverse the route without argument.

What it costs

Land only, per person, two sharing, excluding international flights. Korea prices against $160 careful, $250 comfortable, $390 boutique and $620 luxury per day. Japan runs higher at every tier, roughly $180, $285, $430 and $650.

Add the internal flight or ferry, roughly $90 to $180 per person, and note that flying home from a different airport than you flew into sometimes costs nothing and sometimes costs a lot. We price the open-jaw properly rather than assuming. The Korean half is broken down line by line in what ten days in South Korea costs.

The version we would not build

For completeness, here is the fourteen-day Korea-only route people ask for and what happens when they take it: Seoul five nights, Gyeongju two, Busan three, Jeju three, one travel day. Nothing in it is bad. The fifth Seoul night is an invented day, Busan does not need three, and the Jeju section is two flights for a pleasant resort experience most people describe afterwards as fine. It is a good fourteen days built out of an excellent ten. The reasoning is set out in what we would skip in South Korea.

We will build it if you want it. We will tell you first.

Plan this trip

Tell us how many days you have and whether Korea or Japan is the reason for the trip, and we will split the fortnight honestly. Your Korea consultant writes the first half and our Tokyo office writes the second. Free first proposal, no obligation.

Start planning →

Keep reading

• Korea and Japan in 14 days, day by day
• South Korea in ten days, and why that is enough
• What does ten days in South Korea cost?
• South Korea: the complete guide
• Japan, at the pace you actually want to travel it

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