How to meet people in Seoul when you're travelling alone

Seoul has a rule that no other city enforces so strictly: the food it is famous for comes in portions of two. Walk into a barbecue place alone at dinner and you will be told, kindly, that the minimum is two servings, and sometimes that there is no table for one. Honbap, eating alone, is perfectly normal now for kimbap, noodles and counter food. But the meal you flew here for is a two-person meal.

Most cities let you avoid the question of company. Seoul puts it on the menu.

Hills first

Hiking is the national pastime, and it is the easiest way in. Bukhansan National Park sits inside the city limits, reachable by subway and a short bus ride, and on a weekend morning its trails are full of Koreans in complete technical gear who will offer you fruit at the top. That is not a figure of speech: sharing food at the summit is a custom, and it is how a lot of conversations start.

If you have two hours rather than a day, Inwangsan is the short one: up from the Gyeongbokgung side, along the old city wall, the best view of the city from anywhere, and down in time for lunch. It is the hike to propose to strangers, because it is over before anyone has to be brave for very long.

The river after dark

The Han River parks are where Seoul relaxes. Yeouido and Banpo are the well-known stretches, and from spring to autumn the Banpo Bridge fountain runs in the evening. The ritual is chimaek, fried chicken and beer, ordered by app and delivered to the park, or ramyeon from the convenience store by the water, cooked in the machine on the counter. Drinking outside is legal, the grass is free, and a plan that says "Banpo, 7pm, bring nothing" needs no further explanation.

Neighbourhoods with tables on the street

Hongdae, around Hongik University station, fills with students and buskers from about seven. Yeonnam-dong next door has cafés along the Gyeongui Line Forest Park, a strip of green where an old railway used to be. Seongsu is the converted-warehouse district on line 2. Euljiro is the one to know: the old print district, where after work the alleys fill with plastic tables, cheap beer and dried fish, and nobody minds who sits where.

And the cheapest table in the city is outside any convenience store. The plastic chairs by the door are a legitimate place to spend an evening with a beer, and people do.

Round two

A Seoul evening has structure. Dinner is il-cha, the first round. It is usually followed by i-cha, the second, at a bar, and sometimes sam-cha, which may involve a noraebang. When someone invites you to dinner, they are often inviting you to the whole sequence; when you propose one, you can say how many rounds you mean. The subway runs until around midnight and taxis are cheap, so the clock is looser than Tokyo's.

Two practical things nobody tells you

Google Maps does not do walking or driving directions in Korea; install Naver Map or Kakao Map before you land, or you will spend your first day lost. And for taxis, the Kakao T app works like Grab and removes the language problem entirely.

Seoul is very safe at night. The rules are the usual ones: first meeting in public, tell someone where you are going, keep your own way home. Language-exchange nights in Hongdae exist and are fine, with the crowd problem the first post here describes. The safety page has the rest.

Where MeetMap fits

MeetMap is a map of small plans happening soon near you. Each pin shows the time, the place and the seats left; take one and you are in the group chat. In Seoul the plans write themselves, because the city already comes in portions of two: "Barbecue in Euljiro, 7pm, needs a second person", "Inwangsan at 9, three seats", "Banpo, chimaek, bring nothing".

If the map is quiet, post the first one. Someone in this city is looking at a barbecue menu right now with the same problem you have.