Jeju
You can be here in October for about €625, 4 days, direct.
Why now
Good time in October: 22°C days, 15 rainy days, sea 25°C, fares below average.
Autumn gives the clearest air for Hallasan and the silver-grass hills; spring brings canola and cherry blossom and the crowds that go with them. Korean summer holidays fill the beaches and cars, and the monsoon month in early summer is wet.
Best months here: June, September, October. Daytime highs, sea temperature and rainy days from three years of Open-Meteo reanalysis; a rainy day is one with at least 1 mm of rain, which is the WMO threshold and not the same as "it drizzled".
The place
Jeju is a volcanic island Koreans treat as their Hawaii: a shield volcano in the middle, lava tubes, tangerine groves, black-rock coast and haenyeo divers who still work the shallows in their seventies. It is a driving island with domestic-holiday infrastructure, and it suits hikers and people who want Korea outside Seoul.
What you can do
- 01Climb Hallasan by the Seongpanak trail to the crater lake, reserving the summit permit online beforehand.
- 02Walk Seongsan Ilchulbong's tuff cone at dawn, then watch the haenyeo show on the cove below.
- 03Eat black pork barbecue on Black Pork Street in Jeju City, then hoe raw fish by the harbour.
- 04Take the Manjanggul lava tube's lit kilometre, then the stone-wall lanes of a nearby village.
- 05Walk a section of the Olle trail, the coastal route round the island split into numbered days.
Where to stay · neighbourhoods
Seogwipo for a first visit that includes walking and the south coast, Aewol for cafés and sunsets; Jeju City only for a single night around flights.
Unusual things
- ◦The 4.3 Peace Park, museum and memorial to the 1948 massacre that the island did not speak of for decades.
- ◦Gimnyeong Maze Park and the Bijarim nutmeg forest, old evergreen woodland near the lava tubes.
- ◦Udo island, a bicycle-round islet off Seongsan with peanut ice cream and a coral-sand beach.
Day trips
Flight options
Routes come from OpenFlights (historical) and a 2026 route reference compiled from public timetables. Durations are the published schedule where we have it, otherwise a block-time model fitted on measured nonstop flights. Verify schedules with the airline before booking.
Entry requirements · IT passport
Source: passport-index-data, March 2026 (coarse indicator), covering 258 of our 268 destinations for each of 199 passports. Always confirm with the destination's official site.
Airports
Distances are centre to airport derived · nonstop counts are our route reference for 2026, not every flight that exists.
Local transport
- Airport to city
- Bus, 20 min, ~€1; car recommended
- Car needed?
- Recommended for most of what is worth seeing
- Getting around
- A hire car is the norm for foreigners with an international permit, and buses do reach most sights slowly. The airport is 15 minutes from Jeju City, and the Seoul–Jeju air route runs at very high frequency.
- Clock
- 1 hour ahead of Hong Kong (Asia/Seoul) derived
- Daylight
- 11.4 hours of daylight in October · sunrise 06:37, sunset 18:02 derived
- Currency
- KRW
Good to know
Hallasan closes its trails in bad weather and enforces turn-around times; typhoons in late summer can cancel flights.
Alternatives at a similar price
Whole trip per person for 4 days from Hong Kong in October, then the flight time; estimates, like the total above.
Shanghai
Guangzhou
Beijing
Seoul
Okinawa
Kathmandu