VacationSelector

Seoul or Washington DC?

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

Your match

Seoul
✓ Best match
63
match

Wins on good for families and value for money with your weighting.

Washington DC
52
match

Wins on sights concentration and nature & day trips 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.

SeoulWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Washington DC leads by 3 points.3
SeoulWashington DC
Score1518
Swim season months23
Beaches 10 km11
Coast distance28 km34 km
Water distance28 km34 km
Places to eat. Seoul leads by 8 points.8
SeoulWashington DC
Score8577
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,5591,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3236
Museums & heritage. Seoul leads by 28 points.28
SeoulWashington DC
Score8355
Museums within 10 km20383
Museums within 2 km of centre9055
Share of museums within 2 km %4466
Unesco sites within 50 km50
Nightlife. Seoul leads by 19 points.19
SeoulWashington DC
Score8061
Drinking venues within 4 km3,2911,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,630593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5058
Nightclubs within 4 km2954
Nature & day trips. Washington DC leads by 10 points.10
SeoulWashington DC
Score3242
Protected land share 50 km %110
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %9594
Park area within 2 km126 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Seoul leads by 41 points.41
SeoulWashington DC
Score7938
Tourist attractions within 2 km627
Park area within 2 km126 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km81
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 17 points.17
SeoulWashington DC
Score5976
Notable places within 2 km118305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Seoul leads by 29 points.29
SeoulWashington DC
Score7243
Price level global59.4100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Washington DC leads by 1 points.1
SeoulWashington DC
Score6162
Monthly daytime high2 °C to 30 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall18 mm to 422 mm65 mm to 108 mm
Dry months40
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
Seoul
2
5
11
18
24
28
29
30
26
20
12
4
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Seoul
6
4
5
8
12
17
21
24
23
20
15
10
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Seoul
18
28
38
70
104
138
422
390
156
49
50
20
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Seoul
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Seoul
5
5
6
7
7
6
4
5
6
7
5
5
Washington DC
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Seoul: 1991-2020 normals, Seoul (2.2 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSeoulWashington DC
TokyoHND, NRT
2 h 5 m
€140-229
ICN · 49 km
13 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 45 m
€770-823
ICN · 49 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
SeattleSEA, BFI
10 h 30 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
5 h 5 m
€329-399
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
12 h 0 m
€637-697
ICN · 49 km
5 h 0 m
€226-372
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
14 h 10 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
1 h 40 m
€267-307
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
San FranciscoSFO
11 h 20 m
€560-734
ICN · 49 km
5 h 15 m
€284-334
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
13 h 10 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
1 h 20 m
€158-333
IAD · 37 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 5 m
€603-659
1 stop
ICN · 49 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
Abu DhabiAUH
8 h 45 m
€591-679
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
14 h 5 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
14 h 55 m
€1,052-1072
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
4 h 10 m
no fares
IAD · 37 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

MeasureSeoulWashington DC
Official languageKorean, Korean Sign Language
CurrencyWon (KRW)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF220 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+9UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 112, ambulance 119, fire 119911
Elevation38 m72 m
Main airportIncheon International Airport (ICN)49 km from centre161 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year18 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureSeoulWashington DC
City population9,668,465689,545
People per km²15,9733,896
Museums within 10 km8099
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km50
Distinct cuisines in the centre15682
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Seoul or Washington DC 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.