VacationSelector

Chicago or Seoul?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Chicago
56
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and sights concentration with your weighting.

Seoul
✓ Best match
63
match

Wins on museums & heritage and value for money with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

ChicagoSeoul
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 38 points.38
ChicagoSeoul
Score5315
Swim season months12
Beaches 10 km121
Coast distance10,000 km28 km
Water distance1 km28 km
Places to eat. Seoul leads by 4 points.4
ChicagoSeoul
Score8185
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,1473,559
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3732
Museums & heritage. Seoul leads by 37 points.37
ChicagoSeoul
Score4683
Museums within 10 km45203
Museums within 2 km of centre2090
Share of museums within 2 km %4444
Unesco sites within 50 km15
Nightlife. Seoul leads by 18 points.18
ChicagoSeoul
Score6280
Drinking venues within 4 km1,1233,291
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre7281,630
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6550
Nightclubs within 4 km5129
Nature & day trips. Chicago leads by 6 points.6
ChicagoSeoul
Score3832
Protected land share 50 km %61
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10095
Park area within 2 km118 hectares126 hectares
Good for families. Seoul leads by 24 points.24
ChicagoSeoul
Score5579
Tourist attractions within 2 km1862
Park area within 2 km118 hectares126 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km28
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 11 points.11
ChicagoSeoul
Score7059
Notable places within 2 km217118
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Seoul leads by 29 points.29
ChicagoSeoul
Score4372
Price level global10059.4
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Seoul leads by 4 points.4
ChicagoSeoul
Score5761
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C2 °C to 30 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm18 mm to 422 mm
Dry months04
0255075100

When should you go?

The figures behind each month. Each row is shaded against that destination's own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that measure and the palest its weakest. Shades are not comparable between the two rows.

J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Daytime high, °C
Chicago
0
3
9
15
22
27
29
28
25
17
10
3
Seoul
2
5
11
18
24
28
29
30
26
20
12
4
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Seoul
6
4
5
8
12
17
21
24
23
20
15
10
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Seoul
18
28
38
70
104
138
422
390
156
49
50
20
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Seoul
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Chicago
No sunshine record
Seoul
5
5
6
7
7
6
4
5
6
7
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Chicago: 1991-2020 normals, Chicago Midway Airport (14.5 km from centre). Seoul: 1991-2020 normals, Seoul (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoSeoul
TokyoHND, NRT
12 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 5 m
€140-229
ICN · 49 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
13 h 45 m
€770-823
ICN · 49 km
MinneapolisMSP, STP
1 h 20 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
12 h 30 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
4 h 0 m
€195-265
1 stop
ORD · 25 km
12 h 0 m
€637-697
ICN · 49 km
Hong KongHKG
15 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
3 h 5 m
€172-189
ICN · 49 km
SeattleSEA, BFI
3 h 55 m
€250-272
1 stop
ORD · 25 km
10 h 30 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
1 h 50 m
€141-200
ORD · 25 km
14 h 10 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
11 h 10 m
€687-728
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
3 h 50 m
€253
ORD · 25 km
14 h 55 m
€1,052-1072
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
Abu DhabiAUH
14 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
8 h 45 m
€591-679
2 stops
ICN · 49 km

The busiest departure cities for these two, with a place kept for each other part of the world. Busiest means arriving passengers where an official count exists, and where none does, the number of non-stop services flown: official route statistics are published by the European reporting countries and by nobody else, so a table ranked on them alone would offer a reader in New York or Tokyo ten European cities. Flying times are estimated from the distance between airports, and every row is a city flown non-stop to both. Where the typical offer connects anyway, the stops are shown. Under each figure is the airport the flight lands at and how far that is from the centre, because the nearest airport is not always the one a route is flown to. Where both columns name the same airport it is one flight, and the difference between the two is the distance printed beside it. Typical return fares for 2026-08 to 2026-10, cached market data up to 7 days old. The figure is the middle half of the offers found, so a single price means they agreed and a range means they did not; for a typical route that middle half spans about a quarter of the median, and for the least settled routes rather more than the median itself.

Before you go

MeasureChicagoSeoul
Official languageKorean, Korean Sign Language
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Won (KRW)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF220 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC+9
Emergency number911Police 112, ambulance 119, fire 119
Elevation179 m38 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsIncheon International Airport (ICN)49 km from centre161 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days18 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoSeoul
City population2,746,3889,668,465
People per km²4,52915,973
Museums within 10 km4380
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km15
Distinct cuisines in the centre87156
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Chicago or Seoul somewhere new.

Browse every destination we have measured

Sources

© OpenStreetMap contributors, data available under the Open Database Licence. Place counts include data from Overture Maps Foundation (CDLA Permissive 2.0), assembled from Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and other providers. Notable-place counts from Wikidata (CC0), weighted by Wikipedia language editions. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. Non-stop route lists from the "Airlines and destinations" tables on English Wikipedia airport articles, by Wikipedia contributors, reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Currency from the ISO 4217 register maintained by SIX, cross-checked against country data from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Price level from World Bank open data (PPP conversion factor for private consumption and official exchange rate), CC BY 4.0. Time zones from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); clock offsets computed from the IANA time zone database. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm. Typical fares from Travelpayouts (Aviasales data). Route-level air passenger statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0.

Scores follow rubric v2; snapshot generated 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.