VacationSelector

Cologne or Seoul?

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

Your match

Cologne
57
match

Wins on nature & day trips with your weighting.

Seoul
✓ Best match
63
match

Wins on museums & heritage and nightlife 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.

CologneSeoul
Beaches & swimming. Seoul leads by 15 points.15
CologneSeoul
Score015
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km401
Coast distance256 km28 km
Water distance28 km
Places to eat. Seoul leads by 13 points.13
CologneSeoul
Score7285
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,1423,559
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3532
Museums & heritage. Seoul leads by 23 points.23
CologneSeoul
Score6083
Museums within 10 km47203
Museums within 2 km of centre2790
Share of museums within 2 km %5744
Unesco sites within 50 km35
Nightlife. Seoul leads by 16 points.16
CologneSeoul
Score6480
Drinking venues within 4 km1,1073,291
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre7271,630
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6650
Nightclubs within 4 km9029
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 39 points.39
CologneSeoul
Score7132
Protected land share 50 km %531
Landscape blanket share 50 km %520
Land share of disc %10095
Park area within 2 km118 hectares126 hectares
Good for families. Seoul leads by 7 points.7
CologneSeoul
Score7279
Tourist attractions within 2 km4362
Park area within 2 km118 hectares126 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km68
Sights concentration. Seoul leads by 6 points.6
CologneSeoul
Score5359
Notable places within 2 km81118
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Seoul leads by 12 points.12
CologneSeoul
Score6072
Price level global75.959.4
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. Seoul leads by 1 points.1
CologneSeoul
Score6061
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C2 °C to 30 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 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
Cologne
6
7
12
16
20
23
25
25
21
15
10
7
Seoul
2
5
11
18
24
28
29
30
26
20
12
4
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Seoul
6
4
5
8
12
17
21
24
23
20
15
10
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Seoul
18
28
38
70
104
138
422
390
156
49
50
20
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Seoul
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
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. Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre). Seoul: 1991-2020 normals, Seoul (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneSeoul
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
10 h 0 m
€493-591
ICN · 49 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
11 h 5 m
€603-659
1 stop
ICN · 49 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
10 h 40 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
11 h 55 m
€680-750
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
11 h 15 m
€632-735
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 20 m
€81-121
CGN · 15 km
11 h 5 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 50 m
€203-369
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
12 h 55 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
55 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
10 h 45 m
€646-685
ICN · 49 km
Abu DhabiAUH
6 h 30 m
no fares
CGN · 15 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 2026-09 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

MeasureCologneSeoul
Official languageGermanKorean, Korean Sign Language
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Won (KRW)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF220 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+9
Emergency number112Police 112, ambulance 119, fire 119
Elevation59 m38 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsIncheon International Airport (ICN)49 km from centre161 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days18 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneSeoul
City population1,024,6219,668,465
People per km²2,53015,973
Museums within 10 km4080
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km35
Distinct cuisines in the centre84156
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cologne 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. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.