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It’s 1:00 in the morning, three weeks before your flight to Seoul, and you’ve got 40 tabs of TripAdvisor open. You sort by Top Rated and click whatever has the most green bubbles. A library in a shopping mall. An island from a drama you never watched. A tunnel at the North Korean border. A farm full of alpacas.
In 2024 TripAdvisor caught 2.7 million fake reviews, and more than half came from businesses or their own staff boosting their own listings. Those are only the ones it caught.
I use TripAdvisor too. I scout with it, then dig deeper. And I’ve spent 14 years asking my guests what they loved and what let them down. This list comes from them as much as from me. Your mileage may vary, depending on the trip you want.
Why five stars can’t warn you
Most honest five-star reviews rate the guide. The itinerary rides along. A charming guide on a bad route still collects five bubbles.
Then there’s money. Viator, which TripAdvisor owns, runs a program called Accelerate. Operators raise the commission they pay Viator, and in return they get ad placements and, in Viator’s own words, “improved Viator sort rankings.” Some operators report suggested rates of 42% to 51% just to keep competitor ads off their own listings. So the listing at the top sometimes paid to be there.
(For the record, ZenKimchi is listed on TripAdvisor and Viator. Our top-rated experiences don’t use Accelerate, and we’ve never posted a fake review.)
Starfield Library
A giant library in the COEX Mall in Gangnam. I call it a fake library full of fake books for fake people.
There are real books on the lower shelves. The ones way up high, the ones that make you feel like you wandered into the Beast’s castle, are styrofoam. I have the photos. Reviewers have noticed duplicates, too. They couldn’t even get unique fake books.
People queue for the escalator to take the same photo everyone else takes, then leave after about ten minutes. The mall was struggling, so it parked a library in the food court and waited for Instagram. If you came for photos, go to Euljiro at night instead. It’s near Myeongdong, full of speakeasies and cafes, and bathed in lime green, pink and purple neon.
Nami Island and the bundle
Nami Island isn’t bad. I’ve had a good time there. It just wasn’t made for you. It was made for families in Korea who couldn’t afford to go overseas, and tour companies keep copying each other’s itineraries because it’s easy money. One reviewer compared it to flying to Paris and visiting a Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum.
The bigger problem is what comes bundled with it. Petite France is a fake French village with gift shops selling Bart Simpson dolls and Eiffel Tower replicas. What’s French about it? Absolutely rien. Alpaca World is, in one reviewer’s words, a nano zoo, and others describe skinny, dirty, cramped alpacas. I don’t like supporting that. Skip the Italian village while you’re at it.
The Garden of Morning Calm is the exception. It’s lovely in winter when it’s all lit up.
Better day trips: Ganghwa Island for a scenic, historic island west of Seoul. Suwon for the fortress and palace, reachable by subway (we run a Suwon experience there). Or Icheon, Korea’s pottery center for centuries. In the 16th century, Japanese pirates kidnapped Icheon potters and carried them back to Japan, and Japanese pottery suddenly got better. Today you get good food, soju, makgeolli, museums and hands-on pottery.
DMZ tours
Worth going, with an asterisk. Check what’s included.
The Third Tunnel splits my guests, and a lot of them didn’t like it. You put on a hard hat and walk 265 meters of a tunnel 73 meters underground, hunched over the whole way, to reach a wall with a little window. One reviewer summed it up: “It’s a tunnel. Save your time.” Tickets are limited, which is why tours pick you up so early and race up there so the guide can sprint to the ticket window.
Then come the add-ons. A DMZ sign for photos. Plastic soldiers. A hill with over 3,000 pinwheels. A suspension bridge. An amusement park. The DMZ is one of the few places where a visit should feel serious, and putting rides next to it is like putting a Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum in front of Auschwitz.
Look for tours that include a talk with a North Korean defector or someone from the military. My guests rate those far higher.
Gwangjang Market
Gwangjang still has good food, and it gets its own episode soon. But it has been booked, toured and photographed to death. When a market gets an HBAF almond shop, a Zzang Games and a Starbucks, it’s a tourist zone. (There’s a Starbucks on the DMZ, too.)
Next door, Jongno Sinjin Market is where locals eat dakhanmari and grilled fish, with a row of unique street food stalls on its edge, some of them award winners. It’s a short walk from Dongdaemun Gate. Across town, Mangwon and World Cup Markets have fried chicken, croquettes, hotteok and the stall that invented blowtorched s’mores ice cream, with good cafes around them. Guests I’ve taken to both markets usually prefer Mangwon.
Before you book a food tour
Food tours aren’t overrated. You just need to check before you book.
Grazing tours mostly cluster at Gwangjang, and they’re light on food and light on context. Some end with a “surprise,” and the surprise is often live octopus. Koreans eat it as a dare food over drinks, not an everyday dish, and serving it to foreigners as a gotcha feels like the old TV segments where everyone laughed at the foreigner eating weird food. If you want to try it, go for it. If you don’t, ask first.
Also check whether the food is included. Cheap tours sometimes hand you a bill at the end. The better ones sit you down in real restaurants, include everything, and explain what you’re eating and why.
I’ll happily endorse the Absolut Pub Crawl, though. One drink per bar, the rest on you, neon rainbow shots, and a room full of travelers meeting travelers. If you’re solo, it’s a good night.
Honorable mentions
Myeongdong is Seoul’s Times Square. N Seoul Tower has a great view, but check the lights first: blue at night means clean air, red means you won’t see much. Insa-dong is still good for pottery, name stamps and traditional paper. Nanta is fun if you know what you’re in for (sit away from the aisle unless you want to be pulled on stage), and if you want a show, the New York Times called Seoul the Broadway of Asia. Head to Hyehwa or Hannam-dong.
Support local. Book direct.
Viator takes around 20% from operators, and other platforms take more. I research on TripAdvisor, click through to the operator, and book on their own site. You get the same experience, often for less, and sometimes extras the platforms never list.
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