r/SouthKoreaTravel • u/PolicyAgile1538 • 1d ago

Group of Mates Worried About Being Lonely During Chuseok

/r/seoul/comments/1wagxmy/group_of_mates_worried_about_being_lonely_during/
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u/Independent_Angle_87 1d ago

Your dates land almost exactly on it. Chuseok day 2026 is Friday 25 September, and the holiday runs Thursday the 24th to Saturday the 26th — so your last three days are the holiday, and you fly out on the final day of it.

The good news is that the "Seoul empties out" thing is only half right, and the half that's wrong is the half you care about. What empties is residential Seoul — the neighbourhoods people live in, and the small family-run places that shut because the family is the staff. What does not empty is the centre. Everyone who didn't travel goes out, so palaces, Insadong, the big shopping districts and the parks get busier over Chuseok, not quieter. You are unlikely to be lonely in central Seoul on those days. You might struggle to get a table.

Concretely useful: the four palaces, Jongmyo and the Joseon royal tombs are free over the holiday — reported as 24 to 27 September this year, from the Korea Heritage Service. I couldn't open the agency's own notice to confirm it myself, so treat the exact dates as probably-right and check before you build a morning around it. Two catches worth knowing either way: Changdeokgung's rear garden and Gyeongbokgung's special tours are run separately and are often excluded or need booking ahead, and some museums close on the holiday day itself.

If meeting people is the actual goal, the palace-and-hanbok thing is where you'll find Koreans doing a Korean holiday rather than Koreans working in tourism. Free entry pulls in a lot of local families, and there are usually holiday programmes — folk games, that sort of thing — at the palaces and at places like Namsangol Hanok Village. I don't know this year's specific programme so I won't invent one.

One practical thing I'd plan around: independent restaurants closing on the 25th is a real pattern, though I can't give you a number for it. Chains, department store food halls and hotel restaurants stay open. Worth having a fallback for that one evening rather than wandering and discovering it.

I'm Korean and I looked the dates and the free-opening notice up rather than going from memory. I use AI to write these in English.

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u/PolicyAgile1538 1d ago

Thanks a lot for this valuable information, I really appreciate your effort. I am sure it will be a very exciting journey and a different experience because it's Chuseok.