VacationSelector

London or Seoul?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

London
64
match

Wins on sights concentration and nightlife with your weighting.

Seoul
63
match

Wins on value for money and beaches & swimming 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.

LondonSeoul
Beaches & swimming. Seoul leads by 15 points.15
LondonSeoul
Score015
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km471
Coast distance43 km28 km
Water distance28 km
Places to eat. London leads by 3 points.3
LondonSeoul
Score8885
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,3173,559
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4032
Museums & heritage. Seoul leads by 11 points.11
LondonSeoul
Score7283
Museums within 10 km148203
Museums within 2 km of centre4990
Share of museums within 2 km %3344
Unesco sites within 50 km45
Nightlife. London leads by 15 points.15
LondonSeoul
Score9580
Drinking venues within 4 km5,3273,291
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,4431,630
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4650
Nightclubs within 4 km31229
Nature & day trips. London leads by 8 points.8
LondonSeoul
Score4032
Protected land share 50 km %161
Landscape blanket share 50 km %140
Land share of disc %9795
Park area within 2 km84 hectares126 hectares
Good for families. Seoul leads by 4 points.4
LondonSeoul
Score7579
Tourist attractions within 2 km8562
Park area within 2 km84 hectares126 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km38
Sights concentration. London leads by 30 points.30
LondonSeoul
Score8959
Notable places within 2 km649118
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Seoul leads by 18 points.18
LondonSeoul
Score5472
Price level global84.959.4
Daily budget
Year-round weather. London leads by 2 points.2
LondonSeoul
Score6361
Monthly daytime high8.2 °C to 23.8 °C2 °C to 30 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 67 mm18 mm to 422 mm
Dry months14
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
London
8
9
12
15
18
22
24
23
20
16
11
9
Seoul
2
5
11
18
24
28
29
30
26
20
12
4
Sea temperature, °C
London
No coastline within reach
Seoul
6
4
5
8
12
17
21
24
23
20
15
10
Rainfall, mm
London
59
45
38
43
46
47
46
53
51
64
67
57
Seoul
18
28
38
70
104
138
422
390
156
49
50
20
Daylight, hours per day
London
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Seoul
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
London
2
3
4
6
6
6
7
6
5
4
2
2
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. London: 1991-2020 normals, London Heathrow Airport (22.5 km from centre). Seoul: 1991-2020 normals, Seoul (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLondonSeoul
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 55 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
2 h 5 m
€140-229
ICN · 49 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 30 m
€665-831
1 stop
LHR · 23 km
1 h 40 m
€197-199
1 stop
ICN · 49 km
Hong KongHKG
12 h 0 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
3 h 5 m
€172-189
ICN · 49 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€61-144
LGW · 40 km
11 h 55 m
€680-750
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 5 m
€92-144
LHR · 23 km
11 h 10 m
€687-728
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
11 h 55 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
5 h 0 m
€176-202
ICN · 49 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 10 m
€518-651
1 stop
LHR · 23 km
13 h 45 m
€770-823
ICN · 49 km
HanoiHAN
11 h 30 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
3 h 50 m
€152-181
ICN · 49 km
Abu DhabiAUH
7 h 10 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
8 h 45 m
€591-679
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
11 h 10 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
14 h 55 m
€1,052-1072
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

MeasureLondonSeoul
Official languageEnglishKorean, Korean Sign Language
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Won (KRW)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF220 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+9
Emergency number112 or 999Police 112, ambulance 119, fire 119
Elevation4 m38 m
Main airportLondon Heathrow Airport (LHR)23 km from centre220 non-stop destinationsIncheon International Airport (ICN)49 km from centre161 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days18 days

By the numbers

MeasureLondonSeoul
City population8,799,7289,668,465
People per km²5,59815,973
Museums within 10 km21580
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km45
Distinct cuisines in the centre116156
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 London 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). 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.