A place I won’t forget
The views, the cable car, and a welcome escape from Seoul’s busy streets.
Why visit Namsan Tower
If you are in Seoul during the summer, and it is a nice clear day, a trip up to Namsan Tower (also known as N Seoul Tower) within Namsan Park is well worth it for spectacular views of Seoul, with the plaza viewing area about 270m above sea level. You can get up to the summit from different directions using different forms of transport (e.g. hiking, cable car, bus), but this guide will focus on the route I chose when I was there in August 2024, which was using the cable car up to the plaza summit.
Getting there by cable car
You can take the underground to Myeongdong Station (Line 4, Exit 3) within the busy Myeongdong shopping and commercial district. Once you arrive at the main street near the Pacific Hotel, you can take a winding, fairly steep, leisurely walk up a quiet neighbourhood street called Toegye-ro 20-gil (Zaemiro Street), until you reach the cable car entrance at Sopa-ro after about 10–15 minutes. Once inside the station, you can purchase tickets on a first-come, first-served basis. I would suggest taking the return ticket (15k won at the time of writing), as it saves a fairly long walk/hike down and is cheaper than two one-way tickets. The cable car operates from approximately 10am to 11pm daily, but if you are there in summer, I would say arriving around 4pm is a good time, as it will hopefully be clear and warm, although it can still be quite hot. If you stay for a few hours, the sunset is spectacular as you see the building lights start to glow below you. In August, sunset is usually between about 7pm and 7:40pm, so you will need to stay a little longer to enjoy it. Alternatively, if you leave earlier, you can miss the busy period after sunset when everyone usually makes their way down at the same time.
The cable car journey
Once on the cable car, it takes approximately 3 minutes to go to the upper cable car station. The view through the large glass sections going up is amazing, and you are able to see Myeongdong and Downtown Seoul, as well as the dense pine forests and rocky slopes of the mountain, and the amazing number of tall apartment blocks in the wider suburbs.
The tower and Love Locks
Once the journey ends and you disembark, you come out near the base of N Seoul Tower, an iconic 236.7m communication and observation tower, with construction beginning in 1969 and the main tower structure completed in 1971, before opening to the public in 1980. It is one of the most iconic elevated landmarks in the city. A fun fact is that the tower's lighting can change at night to blue, green, yellow and red to indicate the city's air quality, with blue meaning the air quality is really good! You walk for a short distance up along a fairly steep, pretty wooden boardwalk through a wooded forest section, which is part of the hiking trail to the summit. On your left, you pass by the Love Locks, which is a wooden observation deck with thousands of colourful signed locks left there by couples, and then you walk into the main open-air N Seoul Tower Plaza. If you would like to buy a lock to add to the railing, just be sure to have some Korean won on you, as cash can be useful for some of the machines and vendors.
Views from the plaza
At the plaza, you can go to the sides of the railings and get amazing panoramic views of pretty much all of Seoul in different directions. The north/east view, where you enter, is of the high-rises of Myeongdong, Jongno and Euljiro, and on a clear day you can see the beautiful peaks and greenery of Bukhansan National Park and Inwangsan Mountain framing the back edge of the city, while you can also make out the general area around Gyeongbokgung Palace and Bukchon Hanok Village in the distance. If you then walk to the opposite side, you get views over southern and western Seoul, including Yongsan, the winding Han River and Gangnam, with the super-tall Lotte World Tower being partly visible to the southeast. The plaza itself sometimes has free afternoon events on – there was a martial arts event with music when I was there – and there are stone steps which you can sit and relax on, and watch a performance. You are able to go into the tower and go up to the observation deck, which offers a full 360-degree view, but in my view the scenic view from the plaza is already beautiful, and being outdoors is partly the point of going, so I stayed outside for my time there. However, if the weather suddenly turns very bad when you are there, it may be a good option then.
Food and the return journey
In respect of eating when there, I would suggest buying really nice picnic food earlier in the day and having it in your rucksack to eat outside in the sunshine at the plaza, where permitted. But if you just want to get something small, there is a GS25 convenience store, or there are restaurants for something more substantial or to get a glass of wine or a cold beer. Once you have had your fill of views, food and the atmosphere, you can walk back down the boardwalk and use your return ticket to go down to the lower cable car station and return to Myeongdong down the hill. It probably takes about 1–2 hours to enjoy the plaza and the views, although you should allow extra time for the walk, cable car and any queues, especially if you want to stay for sunset. It is definitely a really fun adventure to do on a sunny day if you want to get more out into the nature of Seoul and away from the busy, noisy streets.
Image credits: Sunset cover photograph by Ian Ward / Unsplash. All other photographs in this article are my own (© wordsfortravel.).
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