South Korea travel guide: a first trip from Seoul to Jeju

In the evening, when the hanbok rental shops close, the lanes empty, lanterns light up under the curved roofs and the smell of makgeolli drifts out of the taverns: Jeonju becomes a 19th-century provincial town again.

With more than 700 hanok gathered in the Pungnam-dong district, Jeonju holds the largest group of traditional houses in the country; the city is the cradle of the Joseon dynasty, whose Gyeonggijeon shrine keeps the portrait of the founder Taejo, and it is listed as a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy.

You spend a day and a night here: the shrine and Jeondong Cathedral in the morning, a Jeonju bibimbap at lunch, Omokdae hill for the view over the roofs, the makgeolli street in the evening, and a night on the heated floor of a hanok.

Bukchon, in Seoul, is a place you visit; Jeonju is a place you live in, and it is the only stop in this guide where you sleep inside the monument.

At 10am, the drums sound in front of Gwanghwamun Gate and the royal guard in red and blue robes crosses the courtyard: it is the image everyone keeps of Seoul.

Gyeongbokgung, the "palace of shining happiness", was the main palace of the Joseon dynasty from 1395, destroyed during the Japanese invasion of 1592, rebuilt in 1867 and then largely demolished under Japanese occupation; restoration has been under way since 1990 and has given the site back Gwanghwamun Gate, the Geunjeongjeon throne hall and the Gyeonghoeru pavilion set on its pond.

The visit follows the palace's north-south axis: the throne courtyard, the king's and queen's quarters, then the Hyangwonjeong pavilion at the edge of a pond, with the Bugaksan mountains as a backdrop. Allow two hours, more if you go into the National Palace Museum, free and inside the grounds.

Compared with the more intimate Changdeokgung, Gyeongbokgung plays the card of monumentality and ceremony; it is the palace to see first, to grasp the scale of Joseon power.

Here the buildings do not follow a straight line: they hug the hillside, and you pass from one courtyard to the next through offset gates, as in a house rather than a palace.

Built in 1405 as a secondary palace, Changdeokgung became the favourite residence of the Joseon kings for almost three centuries; it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site for the harmony between its architecture and the terrain. The Huwon, or Secret Garden, covers 32 hectares of woodland, ponds and scholars' pavilions behind the palace.

The self-guided visit covers the courtyards and the Injeongjeon throne hall in an hour; the Secret Garden can only be seen on a guided tour of about 90 minutes, offered in English at fixed times, which leads to the Buyongji pond and the Juhamnu reading pavilion.

If you visit only one palace with real attention, choose this one: Gyeongbokgung impresses, Changdeokgung makes sense and stays with you.

You climb two flights of stone steps worn by twelve centuries of pilgrims, and the courtyard opens onto two granite pagodas facing each other, one plain, the other carved like a jewel.

Bulguksa, completed in 774 under the Silla kingdom, is the masterpiece of Korean Buddhist art; together with the man-made Seokguram Grotto, which houses a 3.5 m granite Buddha facing the East Sea, it forms a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Dabotap and Seokgatap pagodas and the Cheongungyo and Baegungyo stone bridges are national treasures.

The temple visit takes an hour and a half, between gilded halls, lanterns and gardens; Seokguram, 4 km up Tohamsan mountain, is reached by bus or by an hour-long forest trail, and the grotto is viewed through a glass screen, in silence.

Korea's other temples are livelier; none packs so much ancient sculpture into so little space.

The coach slows, a soldier boards to check passports, and the landscape suddenly empties: fallow fields, barbed wire, watchtowers, and the silence of a strip of land where no one has lived since 1953.

The demilitarised zone cuts across the peninsula for 248 km, 4 km wide, since the Korean War armistice, which was never followed by a peace treaty. At Panmunjom, the Joint Security Area (JSA) is the only point where soldiers from North and South face each other, around the blue huts where negotiations are held.

The day tours from Seoul string together Imjingak park, the Third Infiltration Tunnel dug by the North, the Dora Observatory with its view of a North Korean village, and the ghost station of Dorasan; the tours that include the JSA, rarer and more expensive, add a visit to the blue huts under military escort.

No other place in the country makes the division that shapes today's Korea so tangible.

From the Gahoe-dong 31 lane, the grey tiled roofs cascade down towards N Seoul Tower: the postcard view of Seoul fits into this single frame.

Bukchon, the "northern village", spreads between the two royal palaces on the hill where the senior officials of the Joseon court lived; it holds around 900 hanok, the traditional houses with an inner courtyard and heated floors, the largest concentration in the capital.

You wander for one to two hours along the eight signposted viewpoints, push open the doors of craft workshops (embroidery, lacquer, natural dyeing), drink tea in a hanok turned tea room, then head down to the shops of Insadong or the cafés of Samcheong-dong.

Unlike the reconstructed Namsangol Hanok Village, Bukchon is a lived-in neighbourhood: that is what makes it precious, and fragile.

From the top of Paldalmun Gate, the rampart runs along the ridge, punctuated by watchtowers and pavilions with upturned roofs, with the modern city of Suwon humming below.

King Jeongjo had Hwaseong built between 1794 and 1796 to honour his father and move his capital; the 5.7 km of walls combine stone and brick, Korean techniques and Chinese and European influences, which earned the site its UNESCO listing. The temporary palace of Hwaseong Haenggung, at the foot of the walls, housed the king during his stays.

You walk the rampart in two to three hours, with a break at the Banghwasuryujeong pavilion set above a pond; less keen walkers take the little tourist train, and you can try traditional archery near the north gate.

Hwaseong offers what Seoul no longer has: a complete city wall to walk without crowds, an hour from the centre by metro.

At 6am there are a hundred of you on the crater rim, the wind whistles, and the sun rises out of the sea directly opposite: Seongsan Ilchulbong lives up to its name of "sunrise peak".

This 182 m tuff cone, born of an underwater eruption around 5,000 years ago, forms with the Hallasan volcano (1,947 m, the highest point in South Korea) and the Manjanggul lava tube the natural site of Jeju Island inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

The climb up Seongsan takes 20 to 30 minutes on a built staircase; at the foot, the haenyeo, the island's free-diving women, give demonstrations in the late morning. The ascent of Hallasan by the Seongpanak trail takes 8 to 9 hours there and back to the Baengnokdam crater lake, through forest and then azalea moorland.

Jeju concentrates on one island what the mainland lacks: volcanoes, black lava coasts and subtropical mildness, hence its place in any first trip.

From the terrace, the city spreads out through 360 degrees, cut by the ribbon of the Han River, and as night falls the towers of Gangnam light up one after another.

The telecommunications tower, built in 1969 and opened to the public in 1980, stands 236 m tall on the summit of Namsan, the wooded hill that marked the southern edge of Joseon-era Seoul; the Namsan beacon fires once relayed alerts to the capital.

You go up by cable car from Myeongdong, by bus, or on foot along the park trails in 40 minutes; at the top, the free outdoor platform and the fence of lovers' padlocks are enough for many, while the paid observatory adds the glassed-in view and markers pointing to cities around the world.

Lotte World Tower is taller, but Namsan is more central and more beautiful at dusk: it is the view to see on a first evening in Seoul.

The hills are too regular to be natural: domes of close-cropped grass 20 m high, lined up in the middle of town, which children take for a playground and photographers for a backdrop.

These 23 tumuli hold the tombs of the kings and nobles of the Silla kingdom, which made Gyeongju its capital from 57 BC to 935; the Gyeongju Historic Areas are on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The Heavenly Horse Tomb, Cheonmachong, excavated in 1973, yielded a gold crown and a painting on birch bark, now on show at the Gyeongju National Museum.

The walk through the park takes an hour, including the reconstructed interior of Cheonmachong; you continue on foot to the Cheomseongdae observatory, a 7th-century stone tower, and the hanok village of Hwangnidan-gil, now full of cafés.

Kyoto has its temples, Gyeongju has its open-air tombs: nowhere else in East Asia do you walk among kings like this.

Under the market hall, hundreds of tanks bubble with crabs, octopus and shellfish, and the stallholders, the "Jagalchi ajumma", call out to passers-by in a gravelly Busan dialect.

Jagalchi is the largest seafood market in South Korea, born after the Korean War when refugee women sold their catch on the pebbles of the harbour; the current hall, shaped like a seagull, dates from 2006 and gathers the fishmongers on the ground floor and restaurants upstairs.

The ritual: choose your fish or shellfish downstairs, have it carried upstairs where it is prepared as hoe (Korean sashimi) or spicy soup for a few thousand won in service, then eat facing the harbour; allow an hour and a half, two with a stroll along the waterfront and the neighbouring Gukje Market.

Noryangjin, in Seoul, is bigger and slicker; Jagalchi has kept the noise and smell of a real port.

The houses climb in pastel tiers, blue, pink, yellow, so tightly packed that none blocks its neighbour's view: a neighbourhood rule since its founding, which explains the mosaic effect.

Gamcheon was built in the 1950s by Korean War refugees and followers of the Taegukdo religion, on a slope above the harbour; in 2009, a public art programme turned this poor district into a culture village, with murals, sculptures and open workshops.

You follow the signposted two-hour route with the stamp map sold for 2,000 won at the information centre, climb to the viewpoints, and stop at the terrace cafés and the statue of the Little Prince overlooking the bay.

The nickname "Machu Picchu of Busan" overstates it; the neighbourhood is worth it for the residents who still live there, unlike the museum streets.