VacationSelector

San Diego or Seoul?

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

Your match

San Diego
58
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather 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.

San DiegoSeoul
Beaches & swimming. San Diego leads by 48 points.48
San DiegoSeoul
Score6315
Swim season months12
Beaches 10 km421
Coast distance1 km28 km
Water distance1 km28 km
Places to eat. Seoul leads by 22 points.22
San DiegoSeoul
Score6385
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8233,559
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2732
Museums & heritage. Seoul leads by 39 points.39
San DiegoSeoul
Score4483
Museums within 10 km59203
Museums within 2 km of centre3090
Share of museums within 2 km %5144
Unesco sites within 50 km05
Nightlife. Seoul leads by 30 points.30
San DiegoSeoul
Score5080
Drinking venues within 4 km6153,291
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre4081,630
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6650
Nightclubs within 4 km3129
Nature & day trips. San Diego leads by 23 points.23
San DiegoSeoul
Score5532
Protected land share 50 km %61
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5295
Park area within 2 km308 hectares126 hectares
Good for families. Seoul leads by 4 points.4
San DiegoSeoul
Score7579
Tourist attractions within 2 km4062
Park area within 2 km308 hectares126 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km38
Sights concentration. Seoul leads by 19 points.19
San DiegoSeoul
Score4059
Notable places within 2 km40118
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Seoul leads by 29 points.29
San DiegoSeoul
Score4372
Price level global10059.4
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Diego leads by 27 points.27
San DiegoSeoul
Score8861
Monthly daytime high18.6 °C to 25 °C2 °C to 30 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 56 mm18 mm to 422 mm
Dry months94
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
San Diego
19
19
19
20
21
22
24
25
25
23
21
19
Seoul
2
5
11
18
24
28
29
30
26
20
12
4
Sea temperature, °C
San Diego
15
15
16
16
17
19
20
21
21
19
18
16
Seoul
6
4
5
8
12
17
21
24
23
20
15
10
Rainfall, mm
San Diego
50
56
37
17
7
1
2
0
3
13
20
42
Seoul
18
28
38
70
104
138
422
390
156
49
50
20
Daylight, hours per day
San Diego
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Seoul
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
San Diego
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. San Diego: 1991-2020 normals, San Diego International Airport (2.8 km from centre). Seoul: 1991-2020 normals, Seoul (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan DiegoSeoul
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 15 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
2 h 5 m
€140-229
ICN · 49 km
San FranciscoSFO
1 h 30 m
€121-158
SAN · 3 km
11 h 20 m
€560-734
ICN · 49 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 15 m
€299-455
1 stop
SAN · 3 km
13 h 45 m
€770-823
ICN · 49 km
Las VegasLAS
1 h 10 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
12 h 0 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
SeattleSEA, BFI
2 h 40 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
10 h 30 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
BostonBOS, PSM
5 h 35 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
13 h 35 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
3 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
13 h 5 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
13 h 35 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
MunichMUC
12 h 5 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
10 h 40 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
3 h 20 m
no fares
TIJ · 26 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

MeasureSan DiegoSeoul
Official languageKorean, Korean Sign Language
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Won (KRW)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF220 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC+9
Emergency number911Police 112, ambulance 119, fire 119
Elevation129 m38 m
Main airportSan Diego International Airport (SAN)3 km from centre87 non-stop destinationsIncheon International Airport (ICN)49 km from centre161 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days18 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan DiegoSeoul
City population1,386,9329,668,465
People per km²1,43815,973
Museums within 10 km2680
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km05
Distinct cuisines in the centre44156
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 San Diego 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.