VacationSelector

Paris or Seoul?

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

Your match

Paris
✓ Best match
67
match

Wins on sights concentration and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Seoul
63
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

ParisSeoul
Beaches & swimming. Seoul leads by 15 points.15
ParisSeoul
Score015
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km21
Coast distance149 km28 km
Water distance28 km
Places to eat. Paris leads by 5 points.5
ParisSeoul
Score9085
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4,7323,559
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3332
Museums & heritage. Seoul leads by 7 points.7
ParisSeoul
Score7683
Museums within 10 km185203
Museums within 2 km of centre6590
Share of museums within 2 km %3544
Unesco sites within 50 km45
Nightlife. Paris leads by 8 points.8
ParisSeoul
Score8880
Drinking venues within 4 km3,7963,291
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,6941,630
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4550
Nightclubs within 4 km20129
Nature & day trips. Paris leads by 16 points.16
ParisSeoul
Score4832
Protected land share 50 km %281
Landscape blanket share 50 km %260
Land share of disc %10095
Park area within 2 km82 hectares126 hectares
Good for families. Seoul leads by 4 points.4
ParisSeoul
Score7579
Tourist attractions within 2 km8962
Park area within 2 km82 hectares126 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km38
Sights concentration. Paris leads by 35 points.35
ParisSeoul
Score9459
Notable places within 2 km865118
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Seoul leads by 10 points.10
ParisSeoul
Score6272
Price level global73.759.4
Daily budget€160
Year-round weather. Paris leads by 5 points.5
ParisSeoul
Score6661
Monthly daytime high7.8 °C to 26 °C2 °C to 30 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 75 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
Paris
8
9
13
17
20
24
26
26
22
17
11
8
Seoul
2
5
11
18
24
28
29
30
26
20
12
4
Sea temperature, °C
Paris
No coastline within reach
Seoul
6
4
5
8
12
17
21
24
23
20
15
10
Rainfall, mm
Paris
45
38
41
45
75
51
58
54
51
55
54
62
Seoul
18
28
38
70
104
138
422
390
156
49
50
20
Daylight, hours per day
Paris
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Seoul
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Paris
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. Paris: 1991-2020 normals, Paris-Montsouris (4.6 km from centre). Seoul: 1991-2020 normals, Seoul (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromParisSeoul
TokyoHND, NRT
12 h 5 m
€705-999
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
2 h 5 m
€140-229
ICN · 49 km
OsakaKIX, ITM, UKB
12 h 0 m
no fares
CDG · 22 km
1 h 40 m
€139-234
ICN · 49 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 30 m
€579-648
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
13 h 45 m
€770-823
ICN · 49 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€63-103
CDG · 22 km
11 h 5 m
€603-659
1 stop
ICN · 49 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€110-135
CDG · 22 km
11 h 55 m
€680-750
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
Hong KongHKG
11 h 55 m
no fares
CDG · 22 km
3 h 5 m
€172-189
ICN · 49 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 15 m
€152-378
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
10 h 0 m
€493-591
ICN · 49 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
€118-132
ORY · 14 km
11 h 15 m
€632-735
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 50 m
€292-389
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
8 h 35 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
11 h 30 m
no fares
CDG · 22 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 2026-09 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

MeasureParisSeoul
Official languageFrenchKorean, Korean Sign Language
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Won (KRW)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCF220 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+9
Emergency number112Police 112, ambulance 119, fire 119
Elevation27 m38 m
Main airportCharles de Gaulle International Airport (CDG)22 km from centre277 non-stop destinationsIncheon International Airport (ICN)49 km from centre161 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days18 days

By the numbers

MeasureParisSeoul
City population2,103,7789,668,465
People per km²19,96015,973
Museums within 10 km25180
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km45
Distinct cuisines in the centre169156
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 Paris 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.