Walking Routes to Namsan

Namsan is a great walk! There are beautiful trails and paths, some of which connect to other park systems in the city, there is Namsan Tower, and if you keep walking you will reach Namdaemun Market, downtown Seoul and more.

Naver Map and KakaoMap are indispensable products for getting around Korea, both available as websites and as convenient smartphone apps for iPhones and of course Android. Every visitor to Korea should choose at least one to use. But the software doesn’t always do the best job of showing you all your options for walking from our place to Namsan.

There are at least three “direct” ways (as direct as anything is on the spaghetti streets of Seoul) to reach Sowol-ro (the road that winds alongside the southwest edge of Namsan) from Hannam BnB at Rebekah Court. They range from about half a kilometer to one kilometer. Here are short summaries of three good options, in order from shortest to longest. Click [here] for more details!

The Shortcut

Our favorite way to reach Namsan is a well-manicured path with boardwalks, exercise areas and several staircases – 191 stair steps in total – that starts at Itaewon-ro across the street from the Yongsan Craft Museum, winds behind the Yongsan International School of Seoul and lets out on Sowol-ro just before a parking lot entrance to the Grand Hyatt Hotel.

The Museum Walk

Kakao is the only app that will show users how to walk through the Samsung Museum’s grounds and behind the Grand Hyatt to reach Sowol-ro. There are no stairs but some of the hills are quite steep. The museum grounds are very nice but there’s nothing at all pleasant about walking behind a major hotel.

The Long Way ‘Round

This is the flattest (and longest!) way to reach similar points on Sowol-ro but it does have one staircase with 39 steps. It’s also probably the least interesting or picturesque. This takes you along a lightly-walked section of Itaewon-ro, under a few highway ramps, then through a poorly tended section of sidewalk at the bottom of Sowol-ro.