The Most Beautiful Places in South Korea
21 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in South Korea are Seongsan Ilchulbong, Bulguksa and Seoraksan National Park. The list covers 21 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
South Korea is a land of granite mountains and a volcanic island. Most of the peninsula is old hard rock weathered into steep ridges, pinnacles and clear valleys, while Jeju in the south was built by much younger eruptions that left a shield volcano, tuff cones and long lava tubes. Over this landscape the Silla and Joseon dynasties laid out temples, palaces and fortresses with close attention to mountains and water, following the principles of geomancy, so that many buildings seem to sit in their setting rather than on it.
In Gyeongju, the ancient Silla capital, Bulguksa Temple stands on stone terraces with two famous pagodas, and above it the Seokguram grotto shelters a seated granite Buddha of the 8th century. Seoul keeps the great Joseon palaces: Gyeongbokgung, the main royal palace beneath its mountain backdrop, and Changdeokgung with its Secret Garden of pavilions and ponds. Jongmyo, the royal ancestral shrine, has one of the longest wooden halls in Asia, and Hwaseong Fortress in Suwon is an 18th-century wall of gates and towers built by King Jeongjo.
Nature has its own range. Seoraksan National Park is a mass of granite peaks and gorges in the east, and Hahoe Folk Village sits in a loop of the river near Andong with its thatched and tiled houses. On Jeju, Hallasan rises in the centre of the island, Seongsan Ilchulbong is a crater cone standing out of the sea, and the Manjanggul lava tube runs for kilometres underground. Suncheon Bay adds a softer coast of reed beds and tidal flats.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Seongsan Ilchulbong | Volcano | |
| 2 | Bulguksa | Temple | |
| 3 | Seoraksan National Park | National park | |
| 4 | Gyeongbokgung | Palace | |
| 5 | Haedong Yonggungsa | Temple | |
| 6 | Daehan Dawon Boseong Green tea Plantation | Terraced fields | |
| 7 | Daepo Jusangjeolli Cliff | Cliff | |
| 8 | Hahoe Folk Village | Most beautiful village | |
| 9 | Changdeokgung | Palace | ✓ |
| 10 | Hallasan | Volcano | |
| 11 | Hwaseong Fortress | Fortress | ✓ |
| 12 | Seokguram | Rock-cut architecture | ✓ |
| 13 | Jongmyo | Temple | |
| 14 | Manjanggul and Gimnyeonggul Lava Tubes | Lava tube | |
| 15 | Suncheon Bay | Nature reserve | |
| 16 | Bangudae Petroglyphs | Petroglyph | ✓ |
| 17 | Janggyeon Panjeon of Haeinsa | Library building | |
| 18 | Jeongbang Waterfall | Waterfall | |
| 19 | Daereungwon | Tumulus | |
| 20 | Maisan | Mountain | |
| 21 | Buseoksa | Temple |
01 Seongsan Ilchulbong
South Korea · 39.5 km from Jeju33.458° N 126.942° E
- UNESCO natural beauty
Korea.net / Korean Culture and Information Service · CC BY-SA 2.0 Seongsan Ilchulbong, "Sunrise Peak", rises from the eastern tip of Jeju Island like a crown set at the edge of the sea. It is a tuff cone, built around 6,700 years ago when magma met seawater on a shallow seabed and blew apart in violent steam-driven explosions of the kind named after Iceland's Surtsey.
Did you know? In 2010 it became one of the sites of the Jeju UNESCO Global Geopark.
02 Bulguksa
South Korea · 12.4 km from Gyeongju35.790° N 129.332° E
Bernard Gagnon · CC0 Bulguksa, on the wooded slopes of Mount Toham above Gyeongju, is the clearest surviving picture of how the kingdom of Silla imagined a Buddhist paradise on earth.
Did you know? The Blue Cloud and White Cloud stairways have 16 and 18 steps, 34 in all, matching the 34 stages on the path to enlightenment.
03 Seoraksan National Park
South Korea · 17.9 km from Sokcho38.125° N 128.416° E
kallerna · CC BY-SA 4.0 Seoraksan is the mountain that gives the national park its name, a ridge of pale granite in Gangwon Province on South Korea's east coast. Its highest point, Daecheongbong, reaches 1,708 metres, making it the tallest summit of the Taebaek range and the third highest mountain in the country after Hallasan and Jirisan.
Did you know? The name Seorak joins the words for snow and great mountain, because snow lingers on the peaks long enough to keep the rocks white.
04 Gyeongbokgung
South Korea · 2.3 km from Seoul37.580° N 126.977° E
Image by bongki66 from Pixabay Gyeongbokgung was the first palace of the Joseon dynasty, begun in 1394 when King Taejo chose Hanyang, today's Seoul, as his capital, and completed in its first form in 1395.
Did you know? From 1983 to 2007 Gyeonghoeru appeared on South Korea's 10,000-won banknote.
05 Haedong Yonggungsa
South Korea · 22.1 km from Busan35.188° N 129.223° E
Anna L Martin · CC BY 2.0 Most Korean Buddhist monasteries retreat into the mountains, folding their halls into wooded valleys far from the coast. Haedong Yonggungsa does the opposite.
Did you know? The temple's account says the original monastery was called Bomunsa and was destroyed during the Japanese invasions of 1592 to 1598.
06 Daehan Dawon Boseong Green tea Plantation
South Korea34.715° N 127.079° E
Image by YHBae from Pixabay Rows of clipped tea bushes run in tight contour lines up the slopes of Mount Hwangseong, so that a whole hillside reads as a single green fingerprint.
Did you know? The 1997 television commercial that made the plantation famous across the country was made for the mobile operator SK Telecom.
07 Daepo Jusangjeolli Cliff
South Korea · 31.6 km from Jeju33.237° N 126.425° E
Image by HanshinLyon from Pixabay On the south coast of Jeju, between Jungmun and Daepo, the shoreline is built of stone pillars.
Did you know? Although most pillars are hexagonal, their cross-sections range from four to seven sides along the roughly two-kilometre stretch of coast.
08 Hahoe Folk Village
South Korea · 18.6 km from Andong36.538° N 128.521° E
Bernard Gagnon · CC0 Hahoe sits inside a loop of the Nakdong River, which bends around it in a wide S-curve; the name itself joins the words for "river" and "to turn back".
Did you know? According to legend, the carver Hur died when a curious girl spied on his secret work, which is why the last mask, the fool Imae, has no chin.
09 Changdeokgung
South Korea · 1.4 km from Seoul37.579° N 126.992° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by HeungSoon from Pixabay Changdeokgung, the "Palace of Prospering Virtue", was meant to be the lesser of Seoul's royal residences, yet for much of the Joseon era it was the one the kings actually preferred. King Taejong ordered it in 1404 as a secondary palace, and the first buildings were ready in 1405.
Did you know? Cheonguijeong, the only thatched-roof building left in the palace, has a round roof and a square floor, echoing the old idea of a round heaven over a square earth.
10 Hallasan
South Korea · 17.8 km from Jeju33.350° N 126.517° E
Image by tobatoppers from Pixabay Hallasan, at 1,947 metres the highest mountain in South Korea, is the broad volcano that forms most of Jeju Island. It rises from the sea in long, gentle slopes typical of a shield volcano, and at its summit a crater holds the lake of Baengnokdam, roughly 2 km around and up to about 100 metres deep.
Did you know? About 20 of the island's volcanic cones are tuff rings, formed where rising magma met water and exploded.
11 Hwaseong Fortress
South Korea · 2.3 km from Suwon37.281° N 127.010° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by RUINS from Pixabay Hwaseong is a fortress built out of grief and ambition. King Jeongjo of Joseon raised it between 1794 and 1796 around the town of Suwon to honour his father, Crown Prince Sado, whom Jeongjo's own grandfather, King Yeongjo, had put to death by locking him in a rice chest.
Did you know? Paldalmun survived the Korean War intact, but the structures beside it were never rebuilt because of modern roads, leaving it alone in a traffic roundabout.
12 Seokguram
South Korea · 13.5 km from Gyeongju35.795° N 129.349° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Bernard Gagnon · CC0 Seokguram is not a cave the earth made but one that people built to look like one. On the slopes of Tohamsan above Gyeongju, some 750 metres above sea level and facing the East Sea, craftsmen of the Unified Silla kingdom assembled an artificial grotto out of hundreds of cut granite blocks.
Did you know? The Eleven-faced Avalokitesvara behind the Buddha stands 2.18 metres tall and holds a vase with a lotus blossom.
13 Jongmyo
South Korea · 0.8 km from Seoul37.575° N 126.994° E
João Trindade · CC BY 2.0 Jongmyo, the royal ancestral shrine of the Joseon dynasty in Seoul, is architecture of almost severe restraint: a single low timber hall under one long tiled roof, stretched across the end of a vast courtyard.
Did you know? The tablets of two Joseon kings were never admitted to the shrine at all.
14 Manjanggul and Gimnyeonggul Lava Tubes
South Korea · 23.1 km from Jeju33.528° N 126.770° E
강형원 · CC BY 4.0 Manjanggul is a tunnel left behind by molten rock. When lava from the Geomunoreum volcano in north-eastern Jeju flowed towards the sea, its surface cooled into a crust while the liquid rock kept moving underneath. When the flow drained away it left a hollow pipe.
Did you know? Counting its side branches, the whole Manjanggul system adds up to more than 13 km of passages, and the main tube alone reaches about 23 m wide in places.
15 Suncheon Bay
South Korea · 24.9 km from Yeosu34.843° N 127.506° E
Image by withurmind from Pixabay Where the Dongcheon River meets the sea on Korea's southern coast, Suncheon Bay spreads out as a vast tidal landscape: a broad sweep of mudflat, a sea of reeds that turns gold in autumn, colonies of seepweed spreading over the salt marsh, and a river channel winding through it all in a great S-curve.
Did you know? The hooded crane, the bay's most celebrated winter visitor, was adopted as the official symbol of the city of Suncheon.
16 Bangudae Petroglyphs
South Korea · 13.9 km from Ulsan35.604° N 129.178° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Ulsan Petroglyph Museum · CC BY-SA 3.0 On a sheer rock face above a bend of the Daegokcheon stream in Ulsan, someone began carving whales around seven thousand years ago — and people kept adding to the panel for millennia.
Did you know? The panel is regarded as the oldest known depiction of whaling anywhere in the world.
17 Janggyeon Panjeon of Haeinsa
South Korea35.802° N 128.099° E
Bernard Gagnon · CC0 High on the slopes of Mount Gaya, at the top of the Haeinsa temple compound, four plain wooden halls guard one of the great treasures of East Asian Buddhism: the Tripitaka Koreana, more than 81,000 carved wooden printing blocks bearing the Buddhist canon in Classical Chinese.
Did you know? The racks are open on all sides, kept clear of the walls out of direct sunlight, and raised about 30 cm above the earthen floor.
18 Jeongbang Waterfall
South Korea · 29.8 km from Jeju33.245° N 126.572° E
Image by REXLUNA from Pixabay Jeongbang Waterfall falls straight onto the seashore. Its water, about 23 metres high and up to 8 metres wide depending on recent rain, drops from a cliff of columnar-jointed volcanic rock onto boulders at the edge of the sea, so that the spray and the surf meet at its foot.
Did you know? Jamaica's Dunn's River Falls is often cited as one of the very few comparable waterfalls that end directly on a seashore.
19 Daereungwon
South Korea · 0.5 km from Gyeongju35.838° N 129.212° E
손묵광 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Daereungwon, in the middle of Gyeongju, is a park of great grassy domes: 23 burial mounds of kings, queens and nobles of Silla, the kingdom that ruled this corner of Korea for centuries from its capital here.
Did you know? Seobongchong was named in 1926 after the Swedish crown prince Gustaf Adolf, an amateur archaeologist, helped excavate it: 'seo' for Sweden, 'bong' for the phoenixes on its crown.
20 Maisan
South Korea · 25.8 km from Jeonju35.761° N 127.412° E
Joachim Dirauf · CC BY 3.0 Maisan rises from the Jinan plateau in North Jeolla Province as two bare, steep-sided rock peaks standing side by side, so alike in shape that since the early Joseon dynasty the mountain has been named for the ears of a horse: ma-i-san, "horse ear mountain".
Did you know? Local tradition also holds that oxen were later sent from the stone-tower hermitage to support activists of the Korean independence movement.
21 Buseoksa
South Korea36.999° N 128.687° E
Image by jyi from Pixabay Buseoksa climbs the flank of Bonghwangsan in a series of stone-walled terraces, so that every gate and courtyard opens onto a wider view of the ranges of North Gyeongsang until, at the top, the old wooden hall of Muryangsujeon looks out over ridge after ridge of mountains.
Did you know? When Muryangsujeon was dismantled for repair in 1916, workers found a written record inside dating from the reign of the Joseon king Gwanghaegun.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in South Korea?
- On our list, Seongsan Ilchulbong ranks first, followed by Bulguksa and Seoraksan National Park.
- Is Hallasan a volcano?
- Yes. Hallasan is a shield volcano that forms most of Jeju Island and, at 1,947 metres, is the highest mountain in South Korea. Its summit crater holds a small lake called Baengnokdam.
- How was Seongsan Ilchulbong formed?
- Seongsan Ilchulbong is a tuff cone created by a hydrovolcanic eruption in shallow sea water off eastern Jeju. The explosions built a steep ring of ash around a bowl-shaped crater, and it is now part of Jeju's UNESCO World Heritage Site.
- What is the Secret Garden at Changdeokgung?
- The Secret Garden, or Huwon, is the rear garden of Changdeokgung Palace in Seoul, laid out for the Joseon royal family. Its pavilions, ponds and old trees follow the natural slopes of the hill, which is one reason the palace is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
- What kinds of places are there to see in South Korea?
- In our collection, the places in South Korea are most often temples (4), volcanoes (2), palaces (2) and mountains (1).
- How many places are on this list in South Korea?
- The list covers 21 places.