The wife is of course particularly interested in visiting Taiwan this year-end, whereas for myself, I’m still undecided! The Taiwan itinerary I posted in the last entry would have been pretty dense and we’d be covering a lot. But the absence of subzero weather and any chance of seeing snow — those are things that make me reluctant to do Taiwan until I’ve gotten my snow fix!
Compared to the Taiwan itinerary, the South Korea itinerary is less convoluted. We’d essentially be basing our itinerary around just four cities compared to the six for Taiwan. From the beginning of our planning, we were also always going to do a significant segment on Jeju Island — a popular spot that we visited in 2006 but skipped in our 2024 trip. Beyond that, I also wanted to check out the east coast of the country, an area that we also did not cover last year. So, with those broad strokes, the 20 day itinerary looks like this right now:
Landing in Incheon or Busan and taking a domestic flight to Jeju
Jeju for 6 days
Taking a domestic flight back to Seoul and making our way eastwards to Gangneung
Gangneung for 4 days
Taking a train northwards to Sokcho
Sokcho for 3 days
Taking a train back to Seoul
Seoul for 6 days
Flying home from Incheon
Few airlines fly directly into Jeju from Singapore. The only airline I found that does is Scoot, but there are no flights on our planned departure date. Bummer. The early plan was to take any one of the many flights into Incheon and from there catch a separate domestic flight into the island. We then realized that while most international flights into South Korea land in Incheon, the numerous domestic flights southwards to Jeju were not taking off from Incheon but from Gimpo — meaning we’d have to make our way from Incheon International Airport to Gimpo International Airport in Seoul, e.g. via the Airport Express Rail (AREX) or cab.
Trying to change airports on a busy first day did not sound particularly appealing though. So one alternative was to fly into Gimhae International Airport in Busan and take the domestic flight to Jeju from there. Flights to Jeju from Gimhae are much less frequent than those departing from Gimpo, but at least we wouldn’t have to change airports. However, the online comments about Gimhae were pretty scary, and a lot of the most negative feedback centered on the fact that Gimhae, being the relatively small airport that it is, was not capable of handling the volume of international travelers. There were numerous comments about international visitors arriving in the country and getting stuck in the immigration queue for hours. In light of that, the indicative connecting flight to Jeju I’ve bookmarked gives us 5 hours between arriving and departing Gimhae — that surely must be enough time if we finally decide to do South Korea this year-end!
Still, the comments about Gimhae are worrying. So, if we decide to do South Korea this year, a decision will have to be reached on how to get to Jeju: land in Incheon, which has a much better-oiled system but requires the hassle of changing airports, or land in Gimhae and possibly tear our hair out at immigration there but avoid the airport transfer. Rock or hard place — gaaaah.
Most people visit Jeju for 2 days; we’re spending six! The itinerary I’ve written up for the moment sees us spending each day in a different region of Jeju: central, southern, eastern, and western. We’d likely also need to get private drivers for the latter three regions, as I’m expecting cabs might be a little harder to hail in those parts.
Most visitors to South Korea from here won’t ever go to Gangneung or Sokcho. The vast majority visit Seoul, Busan, and Jeju. So information about these two coastal cities is relatively more scarce. Still, based on my preliminary exploration, there are just about enough things to do in both cities for three full days each, and a highlight would be the visit to Seoraksan National Park from Sokcho.
We covered quite a lot in Seoul during our 2024 trip, so I had to dig hard to find other interesting places in the area to fill our six days. We’d be covering the spots we skipped — including Namsan Mountain Park and Seoul Tower — and also trying again for the day trip to Wondae-ri Birch Forest that we had to drop previously. We also added day trips to a ski resort, Hantan River, and also a visit to a different DMZ — the one that has the famous Starbucks outlet where you can sip coffee while eye-balling North Korea LOL.
Looking at both detailed itineraries, the Taiwan one is simply denser with a lot more going on, though — apart from Taipei and Kaohsiung — much of where we’d be visiting is also more rustic and laid back. There is also slightly more time touring the country in view of the better travel timings and fewer overheads. So, a really tough decision ahead of us on where to go in the coming weeks!