Experience Seoul
Beyond the Guidebooks

Andrew was a fantastic guide. He planned an itinerary that was responsive to our interests and showed us many local gems. His passion for his city and his culture were self evident. We had a fantastic day!

Andrew loves what he does and that was super clear.

Andrew was very knowledgeable and friendly. He was efficient with the time on the tour. We get to see so much of Seoul in 1 day. He became our friend by the end of the tour. I highly recommend Andrew to everyone!!!!! We love you Andrew!!!

Andrew knew so much about the city and the history and was so helpful. He even helped me make some appointments and navigate for things I had planned later in the week. He met me at my motel I didn't even showed up a little early. Very trustworthy and knowledgeable.

This was an excellent walking tour of Seoul, encompassing the history, culture and food of Seoul. Our guide GJ tailored the tour to our interests. We visited the market ( had delicious dumplings) , the palace, museum and walked through interesting parts of the city. The marble pagoda was an unexpected surprise.

Our guide GJ was fantastic! I was traveling with 3 college age kids, who had very different interests. GJ gave us a high energy, customized tour that hit all the things that each one of us wanted -- the market, the running routes, the shops, the history and current issues. My kids don't usually enjoy guided tours, but having GJ today changed their perspective. Thank you so much GJ!

Thank you GJ

The host was elaborated the city well for us to understand

Paul is a very knowledgeable resource on local culture. He is also enthusiastic and engaging.

I had 24 hours in Seoul, and I wanted to pack in as much as could in a half day tour. I booked this tour, and was matched with tour guide Paul Koo. Paul promptly sent me a welcome email and a detailed itinerary which I appreciated and approved. As a higher education professional and instructor, I was ecstatic to be matched with Paul as my guided. Before we started the tour of the palace grounds, we sat down and chatted. As a teacher, I like when lessons begin with an overview and preview of what we’ll learn and why it’s important with opportunities to ask tons of questions along The way. Paul shared his expertise and knowledge of Confucian philosophy and its roots in Joseon period architectural history. Sound heady? Thank goodness! The way he structured and explained Korean history and its foundation in Confucianism allowed me to appreciate all of the beautiful details of the palace architecture and grounds amidst the throngs of tourists dressed in traditional Joseon dynasty costumes. Paul introduced me to the soul of Seoul. Not only did I have a greater understanding the palace and Korean folk life, I felt that I had a better understanding the beauty of Seoul navigating the subway, walking the streets of Gangnam, and connecting with local Koreans in my short time in Seoul. Also watching k-dramas set in Joseon era, make more sense to me now (with a critical eye and better understanding of culture and history). As a result of Paul’s half day tour, I left Seoul hoping to study more about Korean history and culture. I even hope to study more Korean language when I return to visit again with family. If you’re looking for a tour to learn about the foundations of Korean history and culture in Confucianism and architectural history, I enthusiastically recommend Paul Koo. I’ll surely be back and with more time take longer tour.

Paul was so knowledgeable about Korean culture and architecture which was exactly what we wanted. He was hospitable and most helpful.

Paul was perfect- from pre-tour communications , to editing we got a drink and toilet break from the hot sun, to getting us to the train station afterwards. His knowledge of Confucianism was fantastic and helped us understand thousands of years of Korean culture and architecture. We wish we had longer to spend in town, but were only here for 24hrs. Paul packed in the best of the cultural city for us. I highly recommend and you should request him for a very personalized tour experience.

Jeeseon was a great guide and our family of four really enjoyed the tour she planned out for us. We walked through the city and got to have a great variety of experiences - street markets, old village, learned a little bit about K-pop, and palaces - and all this within the four hours we had booked with her. She was friendly and personable and kept the tour interesting for our 17 and 13 year old sons. Highly recommend!

Jeeseon Choi was my guide for a 6hr walking tour. She was an excellent guide who was knowledgeable about the various places we visited and brought me to places that were less crowded and somewhat off the beaten track. She indulged my request for Yukhoe (seasoned raw beef) and brought me to a very local place to try it...to die for. The concept of thrifing in Seoul is at the next level and I now know where the old Korean men hangout in the afternoons to give their wives a break!

We also needed help with buses extra and she willingly helped us.

We had a wonderful time in Seoul today with Jeeseon. She was an exceptional host.

I enjoyed walking Seoul with a local and being introduced to places I would have never known about.

Jay was fantastic starting with when we first signed up all the way through our experience. He was fantastic at communicating and finding out our preferences in advance. He met us right in our hotel lobby and personalized the entire tour experience. He is super knowledgeable and also was very good at taking photographs!

Thank you so much, Jay, for a fantastic introduction to Seoul. Could not have asked for a better guide. Really enjoyed learning from you during our day together.

We had a private guided tour with guide, Jaen. He was very professional, efficient, and knowledgeable. He made some suggestions that we gladly accepted in order to maximize our sightseeing experience. In his pleasant ways, he gave us a broad overview of many sites and interesting areas of Seoul and provided us with valuable information that we would never have known about without his explanation. We would highly recommend this tour!

Thomas was patient and engaging. He took us to eateries based on our specifications and was forthcoming with information on various sights along our walking path. He was also very accommodating of our impromptu shopping stops along the way and helped us with some bookings we were having difficulty with. My family and i loved spending the evening with Thomas! Thanks Thomas for a great time and the amazing pictures!!

This half-day tour that my family went on with Thomas of City Unscripted in Seoul was such a gem. We're blessed to have him showing us around with amazing photography shots and culture and history. It's like professional tour guide and photographer all in one. We took away with us not only beautiful memories of Seoul but also phenomenal pictures to relish. Highly recommended.

Since we only have two full days in Seoul to see the city, this is an efficient and effective way to visit key attractions without figuring out transportation in between. Thomas, our guide, is great to explain architecture, symbolic meaning in the Palace to peek into Korean culture.

very tentative to introduce Seoul. We won't be able to see so much about Seoul without Thomas in 4 hours.

Great!

It was a great overview of Seoul and the various landmarks around town. We got a wonderful overview of life in the city. Our guide, Hans, was great. He listened to our needs and was actually able to start the tour earlier than we had scheduled.

I had a great time. My guide was very informative and extremely accommodating to anything I wanted to see!

Great 5*

O nosso guia foi muito prestativo! Recomendamos o passeio! Muito lindo! Seul é encantadora e maravilhosa! Our guide was very helpful! We highly recommend the tour! It's beautiful! Seoul is charming and wonderful!

O nosso guia foi sensacional

Steve, our guide was amazing. We were in Seoul for only 23 hours but he packed in a lot of history and sightseeing into our tour. Highly recommended. Steve was very knowledgeable and kind!

The best way to see the city and get to know intricate details of the culture and place. An awesome experience!

Young was great he knows his stuff. We learned a lot about the colourful history of Korea. We had useful local tips as well which was very handy for first timers like us. Happy we started our holidays with this tour.

Young was so authentic and told us about many aspects of Korean life as he led us on foot across the district of Seoul where we were staying. We really appreciated how he spoke truthfully about the complexities of Korean history and culture, and we gained a background understanding going all the way back to Confucian times. This truly enriched the rest of our short stay in Seoul, and even our understanding of the K-movies we then watched on our onward flight! Young took care to ensure that the sites he showed us were all free entry so as not to add cost to our tour, and a highlight was the scale model of Seoul that's in the city's history museum. Young used this very well to enhance his storytelling.

Toller Abend mit tollen Einblicken in die koreanische Esskultur an verschiedenen Stationen in der Stadt, hat mir sehr gut gefallen. A wonderful evening with great insights into Korean food culture at various stops throughout the city. I really enjoyed it.

We arrived as ignorant tourists with next to no knowledge of Korean culture and history. So, we booked this for our first full day in Seoul and hoped our guide could give us some context and a ‘place to start’. And did he?! Our first surprise was that Young turned up in an A/C car on our scorching August day, “because there are so many places to cover in such a short time”. We were whisked from one side of the city to the other - from mountain viewpoints to museums to neighbourhoods. Our second surprise was that Young turned out to be a history scholar having discovered an interest in Korean history, and is currently turning his passion into a book. How he managed to give us a condensed history of Korea in just a few hours was admirable. We were blown away but the information, history and change that Korea has undergone. This tour formed a firm foundation for the rest of our stay, and didn’t ’step on the toes’ of other tours and sites that we subsequently took (e.g. DMZ and Gyeongbokgung). We were introduced to parts of Seoul we would never have thought of. I’d say 5hrs is a minimum for doing this and I wish we’d booked longer.

Bergen was a kind and knowledgeable guide. Would 100% recommend him to anyone seeking a tour of Seoul or anywhere nearby.

He is using the English name Bergen because he lived in Bergen County, NJ for six years!

Bergen Park was an excellent guide. He customized the three hour to fit my interest in history and culture. The main palace tour and museum were excellent in spite of the cold! Bergen Park was knowledgeable and friendly while very capably handling my inane questions without ever being overbearing. He is a masterful photographer too! It was a pleasant morning, including a nice stroll through the eclectic neighborhoods of central Seoul. A great three hours of sightseeing and learning!

Bergen was a great guide. Very knowledgeable. We only had a short stay in Seoul and he chose good highlights to show us. Would recommend.

I did this full-day, private tour with Rossi and had a great time! The American Express travel concierge found and booked this tour for me and it was exactly what I was hoping for! Seoul has some beautiful old neighborhoods filled with tiny, winding streets and they’re not easy to find or navigate on your own with the internet. Rossi knew where to go and I felt like I saw a lot I wouldn’t have found on my own. Rossi took me all over Seoul and showed me various neighborhoods and helped me get comfortable navigating around for the rest of my stay. Rossi was super easy to communicate with, very accommodating, and easy going. I would definitely recommend this tour over group tours so you can explore everything with a private guide at the pace you want.

I took the 8 hour personalized tour. My guide was Rossi. We had communicated via Whatsapp on what I wanted to see. Since the tour fell on the second day, I had already seen some of the things he wanted to show me. He was extremely flexible and we adjusted the schedule on the fly. He was easy to get along with and we had some good conversations while crisscrossing the city walking and using public transportation. A highlight was Ewha Women's University where I never would have gone on my own. Highly recommended.

Rossi has been a great guide. Over the period of day, we covered a lot of the tourist and non-tourist attraction. Location such as Gyeongbokgung palace, Blue House, Bukchon Hanok Village, Insadong, Namdaemun Market, Kwangjang Market, Cheonggyecheon Stream before back to Myeongdong. Overall, it’s been a great pleasure and of course great companionship from Rossi to explain and inform us about the nuance of Seoul with local.

Rossi was great. He met us at our hotel. We walked the streets and took a bus to Insa-dong. We walked through a small lane to a beautiful traditional restaurant that served the best kimchi pancake and rice wine. Next we moved to another eateries that served one of the best egg omelette (forgot the Japanese word for it) and army stewed. Thereafter to Kwang Jang Market and along the way we had watermelon juice (they called it apple-watermelon cause it’s the size of your palm). At the market, we had raw beef (similar to carpaccio but taste much better). We didn’t add live octopus on the raw beef as we don’t have the courage to have something still moving in our mouth. We didn’t have the chance to have oritang (traditional duck stewed) as it was sold out when we arrived . Instead, we had Korean fried chicken and beer. We walked all the back to our hotel as we were so full and there is no more space for food. I would recommend this food trail but make sure you have a big appetite. Derrick & Emmanuela Singapore

We had an incredible time with Kevin! He was so knowledgeable about the best parts of the city and even gave us tips on where to go next. The experience was really excellent and felt personal to us

Had an amazing tour with Kevin. He was incredibly knowledgeable, planned a great itinerary, and picked a delicious spot for lunch. Would absolutely recommend.

Mary's passion and knowledge of local food was amazing. We had some of the best experiences that we could have ever had with her.

Bella was fantastic. Knowledgeable and kind. I would strongly recommend her. She made the whole tour so much better and got us around quickly with no hivbups!

Nice tour of both historic and modern sites. Our tour guide Don was great, we really enjoyed the day and recommend this tour.