Road trip in South Korea

Quite quickly after doing some research on what we wanted to see in South Korea, we came to the conclusion that a road trip with a car would be the most convenient option. In this post I'll talk about our trip mainly from the point of view of driving in South Korea.

Renting a car

I googled renting a car in South Korea and ended up finding a couple of options. I could rent a car a bit cheaper from Incheon airport but it would mean we would need to go 1 hour west from Seoul to get the car, and then drive it all the way through Seoul to get to Seoraksan on the east coast on our first day. I suggested we'd pay a bit more and rent the car from Hannam, which meant we could skip the Seoul city drive and start already from the east.

The rental company I ended up choosing was Lotte Rental Car (롯데렌터카) which is suggested in many other blog posts and as Lotte is a big company, they catered to tourists as well and their web page was easy to navigate. I booked a car from Seoul to Seoul for 12 days easily from their website.

We also needed another car for Jeju. You could take your car to the island with a ferry, but it takes time and money which felt like a waste for us. We left our first rental car in a parking lot in Busan airport and rent another car for Jeju from Lotte Rental. I did have to call them a month before to rent the car, as we arrived to Jeju right on time for Chuseok festival and all the cars seemed to be rented. Also, because I already had one rental car from Lotte, I couldn't reserve a new one from their website, since it would've been a double booking. After a small language barrier on the phone, everything was booked. We also booked the full insurance coverage for both cars - just in case.

International Driver's Permit (IDP)

To drive in South Korea you need an International Driver's Permit which is not the same thing as an international drivers licence. I had the IDP already since it is needed to drive in Australia as well, so I just made sure the one I chose (Geneve 1949 or Wien 1968) is also eligible in South Korea. For me, it took about 2 weeks for the IDP to arrive by post from the Finnish Autoliitto.

In addition to IDP you need your passport and your drivers licence from your country.

Route planning

South Korea is not a very big country, so you get to see quite a lot in a small amount of time. We had 3 weeks to spend and wanted to stay in Seoul for a week, so the two first weeks were dedicated to road tripping. We picked up our car from Hannam to avoid driving in the Seoul city central and begun our journey. Below is a map provided by freeworldmaps.net and I have added a rough route of our drive with purple. The yellow dots are where we stayed for one or more nights. Below the picture I will tell about the route in more detail.

From Seoul we drove for three hours to Seoraksan National park and around 3pm we started our climb. After the hike we drove a little bit south to Gio Resort, Yangyang, and stayed for the night. The next day we drove the whole east coast. It took about 4,5 hours of driving and then some stops in between. We stopped at the Jumunjin beach to take a lot of pictures - the beach is famous for a BTS bus stop from one of their photo shoots, and the place has a lot of other lovely photo spots as well.

After that we drove to Hwanho Lake Park Space Walk in Pohang, but it was raining heavily so we ended up not doing the space walk and continued our drive all the way to Gyeongju, where we stayed for two nights. We did use our car during the two days once, as we drove to the Yangdong Cultural Heritage village for a short daytrip.

From Gyeongju we continued to Busan, stayed there for three nights, while our car was in the hotel park tower. After Busan, we left our car at the Busan airport car park and flew to Jeju Island.

In Jeju, we hopped on to our second rental car and drove a lot on the west part of Jeju. We stayed in an Airbnb for four nights and then flew back to Busan and continued our road trip straight to Gwangju. We were exhausted from the early morning flight so decided not to see anything on this drive and just drove 3 hours on the high way straight to Gwangju, where we stayed for one night. There is a lot to see and do on the way, or a little drive away from the high way to Gwangju, so if you are planning on driving around the same area, check out before hand what you want to see. From Gwangju we continued to Jeonju and stayed there for 2 nights. The last drive from Jeonju to Seoul was a long one since the traffic takes time as well, but we did return our car at Hannam mid day, and then took a cab to our hostel in Hongdae.

Things I noticed while driving in South Korea

These things are from my point of view as a driver from Finland. I have also driven quite a lot in Australia and a bit in Italy and Spain.

• Using the hazard lights was really common in South Korea, but not in the same way as in Spain. They would use the lights to alert the person behind about traffic and even the smallest sudden changes in the speed on the high ways.

• Turning right on traffic lights when the light is red. I think this is common in many other countries as well, but for me it took some time to understand when I can go and when not. The locals did let me know quite quickly if I was blocking the way.

• Lots of speed bumps, everywhere. Sometimes they came quite suddenly - this is why we took the full insurance for the rental car. Got some scrapes on the bumper of the car.

• GPS - Google Maps doesn't work in South Korea so either download Naver Map on your phone and use that as a GPS or pay for the GPS from the rental company. Ours was in English and it was extremely helpful - there are A LOT of speed cameras in South Korea and the GPS mentions about all of them. In most cases, it also mentions about speed bumps, but unfortunately not every time...

• Lots of tunnels. South Korea is a country filled with hills and mountains, so there are a lot of tunnels on the roads. Many times the tunnel entrances are decorated with different kinds of artwork - it was fun spotting them while driving. Inside the tunnels there are also lights and sounds to keep you alert and awake. Couple of tunnels even had something on the ground to create a song as you drove over it with the wheels.

• Finding free parking spots was somewhat complicated to achieve at times, but we ended up not getting a ticket at any point of our trip. In Gwangju, the guesthouse owner helped us and told us where to park our car for a couple of days and in Jeonju and Busan we used a paid parking lot. Knowing how to parallel park is a must.

• Great snacks at rest stops on highways. Definitely take advantage of the huge rest stops with snacks. We had some corn cobs, potatoes, tteokbokki... Many smaller Korean dishes available!

• Road tolls. These were somewhat confusing to understand occasionally. When you get on the high way, you go through a tollgate. If your rental car doesn't have a electric Hi-Pass, choose your lane carefully. Even when we chose the "not-Hi-Pass" gate, we didn't always get a ticket, and just drove through. At the exit toll gate, if we didn't have a ticket, we always told where we came from, and paid accordingly. Everything was always fine at the exit toll gates, and we were probably the only ones confused.

If you have the time and the license, I suggest renting a car in South Korea. The normal traffic is quite calm and easy to navigate. Sometimes on urban areas there was some traffic congestion, so you should have some extra time booked for every drive. I enjoy driving and road trips, so this was definitely the best way for me to see the country, but the public transportation between bigger cities is also very good, so it is a great option as well.