Festivals on the map

• When to go — café and workshop streets are at their best in daylight and shut in the evening; drinking and club streets are the opposite. The same neighbourhood can look like a different place by day.
• Who gathers there — university areas are cheap and loud. Long-established wealthy districts are quiet and expensive.
• What the neighbourhood used to be — Korean districts are usually built out of something else. Old factories, hanok houses, the edge of a former garrison: that history sets both what is sold and how the place feels.
• The station is often not named after the district. Get off at the station listed in the sheet.
• The three most often compared in Seoul — Hongdae for nightlife at student prices, Itaewon for food from many countries and the easiest English, Seongsu for daytime cafés and concept shops.

Before you go The circle on the map is not a boundary. It means “around here”, and in practice many districts carry on past its edge.