Jeonju

Jeonju's hanok village is not a preserved street but a district of roughly eight hundred traditional tiled-roof houses, many of them lived in, several of them guesthouses. That is the reason to sleep here. Between about ten and six it is a busy day-trip destination with rented hanbok and food carts; in the early morning and after dinner the lanes go quiet and the quarter reads as the neighbourhood it is.

The food claim is real and organised. Jeonju is where bibimbap is taken most seriously, served with beef tartare and a table of side dishes, and the city is also known for kongnamul gukbap, a bean-sprout soup eaten as a hangover cure, and for the makgeolli houses where ordering a kettle of rice wine brings a table of food with it. Eating well here costs very little and takes an evening rather than a meal.

Beyond the village there is Gyeonggijeon shrine, a paper-making workshop tradition still working in the back lanes, and Jeondong Catholic Church across the road from the shrine. None of it needs more than a morning, which is why one night is usually the right answer.

Jeonju sits on the Jeolla line rather than the main Seoul–Busan spine, about an hour and three quarters from Seoul by KTX. That makes it a clean first stop on a route heading south-west before you cut across to Gyeongju and Busan, and an awkward one to reach as a detour from anywhere else.