South Korea Cycletouring: North-East Loop from Seoul

To be honest, South Korea has never been on my list for a vacation let alone a cycle touring trip. Until I had a conference in Seoul coming up in June 2025. I wanted to take some holiday before the conference, started reading about cycling in South Korea and soon realized that it is the perfect place for bicycle touring. So, I took about 2 weeks of holiday before the conference and explored South Korea on bike for about 10 days. Instead of going through the trouble of taking my own, I rented a Trek road-bike from Bike Rental Korea (https://bikerentalkorea.kr/) for only $25 per day and brought only my Ortlieb bags.

I was planning to stay in Hostels/Hotels along the way and travelled light without camping or cooking equipment. Since early June is not a busy time in terms of vacation in South Korea, there was no need to make any Hotel reservation. Typically, I cycled for a few hours each day and around noon I took a short break, decided how long I want to cycle on the day and looked for accommodations.

Since I only had about 10 days, I did not want to spent a day on a train and decided to do a round-trip with start and finish in Seoul. The rough idea was to go south on the bike path to Busan first, but then take a turn and head for the east coast, go north on the east coast cycling path and go back to Seoul across the Taebaek Mountain Range. In the end, I rode just over 900 km with 7200 m of climbing on 9 days.

While June is not the ideal time for a cycling trip in South Korea, temperatures were still in an acceptable range, i.e., around 30 °C on most days, with a lot of sun and very little rain.

Day 1: Seoul to Yeoju (104 km, mostly flat)

Cycling out of a big metropole with 10 million inhabitants is typically not the most fun part of any cycling adventure. Seoul, however, is different. After I reached the Hangang River Bike Path, which was about 1km from my hotel, it was very relaxing cycling on a wide bike path along the Han River, without any of the city-cycling stress and I did not share the road with a car for quite a while. On the first day I planned to cycle around 100 km, which brought me to Yeoju, where I found a nice Hotel next to the Han River.

Day 2: Yeoju to Suanbo (85 km, 500 hm)

On the next day I continued along the Hangang River bike path until I turned left onto the Saejae Bike Path just south of Chungju. Along the Han River, the cycling continued to be quite flat on well-maintained bike-only paths with nice views. After the turn away from the Han River, there was some slow, steady uphill cycling until I reached the “Hot Spring” town of Suanbo. Since Suanbo is one of South Korea’s most famous historic spa towns I decided to call it a day, looked for a hotel and went to one of the plentiful Spas to relax before taking a walk through the town. For dinner I had the famous Korean Fried Chicken and Beer.

Day 3: Suanbo to Mungyeong (53 km, 550 hm)

Directly out of Suanbo the first “real” climb of the tour started, up to an elevation of about 525 m with a bit up and down on the way. Luckily, it was quite overcast and even raining a bit, so the riding was quite pleasant and not too hot. On the climb there was no separate bike path and I was riding on the road, but there was very little traffic. Compared to riding along the rivers the days before, the views in the hilly landscape were more varied. After the descend I went back on a separated cycle path along the Yeong River.

Unfortunately, I did not feel great on the day and decided to stop already after just over 50 km in the small town of Mungyeong. While I arrived quite early, I took a short late afternoon nap, walked around the lakeside area a bit and when I wanted to get dinner around 21:00 I noticed that most restaurants already closed. When I found one, which still had (two) customers they also were about to close the kitchen, but one of the other customers somehow managed to convince them to make me a kimchi pancake. We ended up talking a bit, although his English was not the best, because he was wondering what I am doing in this small town. Then he taught me about Korean drinking customs and we had a few soju, beer and small dried fish, for which he insisted on paying.

Day 4: Mungyeong to Andong (73 km, 450 hm)

Another rather easy day with only a short climb at the beginning  and the last day along a river: the Nakdong. After leaving Mungyeong I rode on the last stretch of the Nakdangong cycle path towards Andong (the cycle path starts in Busan going to Andong). The bike path is already a bit older in some sections, but still good to ride on. Also, getting further away from Seoul and other big citys on a weekday meant it was getting quite empty. I barely saw other cyclists along the way, until I was close to Andong.

Andong itself was a nice little town. I explored it a bit on foot and went for dinner to a cold noodle place, which seemed quite popular. I had cold buckwheat noodle with dried fish as topping, which so far was one of my favorite dinners. As I learned later, the dried fish version is rather uncommon, but typical for the area. I also tried to recreate the dish back in Germany, but only partly successful, because I could not find the same dried fish. Also, I found a nice local brewery, which had quite good beer.

Day 5: Andong to Giseong-ri (117 km, 946 hm)

The first day not on a dedicated bike path along a river, but on nice rural roads with very little traffic. Starting in Andong, I first rode along a lake, which interestingly had a lot of floating solar panels. After around 50 still flat kilometers, the climbing started, first slowly and then finished with 1.4 km at an average of 13.4%. Luckliy, my legs started to feel better again after the easy days. Overall it was close to 1000 m of altitude gain, before the long descend towards the east coast started.

On the coast, I joined the east coast bike path and rode on for another 30 km. The section was mostly on a separated lane and next to the ocean, which made for some nice riding. Giseong itself was just a small village with a fishing harbour, but had very nice and interesting paintings on the walls all over the village. After spending way too much time looking at all the paintings, it got quite late and the only dinner I could find were instant noodles from a small grocery store.

Day 6: Giseong-ri to Donghae, 120 km, 1303 hm

Further along the coast, but not exactly flat. This section of the east coast bike path was mostly on the road and while it was still following the coast, there were several sections up small hills and away from the coast, which resulted in quite a lot of climbing. Overall the riding was still nice though and there was not that much traffic, except for a few sections passing bigger harbor towns.

In the end I stayed on Donghae, a rather industrial harbor town. The hotel I found was a bit outside and it got late, so finding a place for dinner turned out to be, once again, quite tricky. After walking walking to the 5 retaurants I saw on the map in the area, who told me the kitchen is already closed or had the lights switched off, I was heading to the closest and luckily saw a small sushi place, which still had two customers sitting on the counter. The chef was quite nice and made me a great omakase menu, in which he was generous with the fish.

Day 7: Donghae to Naksan Beach, 105 km, 664 hm

The last day along the east coast. Mostly flat with just a few small climbs along the coast. Apart from a small section in Gangneung the route was again more on dedicated bike paths and large parts were directly along the ocean. Overall it was a rather easy day of cycling, compared to the previous days, with some nice views along the way, but nothing spectacular.

I stayed close to Naksan beach in Yangyang, which looked like a rather touristic town with many old and some new hotels. There were quite a few restaurants with fresh seafood in front, but most of them relatively empty since it was off-season. I walked around the beach area a bit and in the end picked one of the restaurants mostly by chance. I had some fresh, and surprisingly cheap, sea urchins on rice with the typical Korean pickles and a beer.

Day 8: Naksan Beach to Eoyupo-ri via Guryongnyeong Pass, 153 km, 2152 m

Turning west again away from the coast, I “just” had to pass the northern South Korean mountain range to get back to Seoul, for which I decided to take the route via Hongcheon. With more than 150 km and 2100 m of climbing by far the longest day in the saddle. But I had a good rest and the legs felt quite good again, after the rather flat day before. It was also raining a bit in the morning and temperatures dropped well below 25 °C on the first climb. The ride started with flat 10 km, perfect to warm-up, before the main climb of the day: up to around 1000 m altitude through green forests and on a nice road with moderate climbing (5-6%) little traffic. Except for about half-way of the climb, where I saw a sign “Old Mountain Road”. A quick look at the map showed that it will join the main road again soon, so naturally, I took the old road. And regretted it a few 100 meters in, when the first 15%+ ramp started. And after making it up the first ramp I already saw the next one. The road then continued through a small village before joining the main road again and was overall very nice, apart from the steep sections.

After reaching Guryongnyeong Pass, the highest point of my tour, it was mostly a slow and steady downhill, with 2 small additional climbs (which did not feel that small with the tired legs I had). In Hongcheon I briefly looked for a Hotel, but the city did not particular nice and I could not find a nice Hotel, so I decided to go on for about 30 km more, to an area with several Hotels/BnBs, where I found a nice looking place called “Heidi Village” on booking.

Day 9: Eoyupo-ri (Heidi village) back to Seoul, 117 km, 638 m

After a nice and relaxing stay at the “Heidi Village”, the last day of my cycling trip was about to bring me back to Seoul. The stay started with a small climb on rural roads with very little traffic, which brought me to the Bukhangang River cycle path after about 15km. The rest of the day was again the relaxing cycling along the river cycle path, interrupted by a short section between Gapyeong to Cheongpyeong, where the cycle path is on an old train track, the Gyeongchun Line Bicycle Path. Interestingly, some part of the cycle path are also covered by solar panels. The train track part has some slow up and down sections, after that it was an easy and flat rolling back into Seoul. Getting closer to Seoul and because it was on the weekend the bike path also got more crowded again. I also saw quite a few people taking the train with bikes, it seems quite popular to take the train in one direction from Seoul to Gapyeong and cycle the other. After being back on the bike path with about 80 km to go I also met two Korean guys, who happened to go a similar pace and we cycled together back to Seoul, which made the cycling along the river a bit less boring and the draft was much appreciated.