City guide · South Korea

Seoul

Seoul is 605.21 km² holding 9,579,449 people at the start of 2026, inside a metropolitan area of 26,037,000 spread over 12,685 km². The Han River bisects it, and the halves are not interchangeable: Gangbuk to the north carries the Joseon capital, Gangnam to the south was built in the last fifty years. Four mountains — Bugaksan, Inwangsan, Naksan and Namsan — frame the old centre, and Gyeongbokgung, completed in 1395, sits under the first of them. Twenty-five gu and 467 administrative dong are stitched together by a metro that carried around seven million passengers a day in 2024. A visitor will use six or seven of those districts.