Jeonju City, South Korea

Jeonju (전주) is a city in western South Korea. It’s known for the Jeonju Hanok Heritage Village and Bibimbab!

I never heard about Jeonju before…this city wasn’t on my destination list of South Korea until I saw the picture of Daedunsan, the mountain with a steep stair on the top!

Then I looked up more info about Jeonju and found out how interesting it is…

My list of things to do in Jeonju:

I tried to watch local YouTubers and read more on TripAdvisor about Jeonju. Looks like the city is good enough for at least 2-3 nights visit.
1. The MUST SEE – Jeonju Hanok Village or Korean Traditional House Village (KR: 전주한옥마을). The village was built during the Joseon period (1392-1910), so it would be about last 100- 600 years ago!

The village is very famous for pictures of Hanbok (Korean Traditional Costume) where are so many shops for the costume for rent in front of the village.

The village is about 3000 won (Adult) admission fee (NO PETS ALLOWED), but it’s FREE if you wear the hanbok to visiting.

The Village is also surrounded by many shops and where to eat, and it’s lively to walk at night!

2. Nambu Market, The market is next to the Hanok Village within walking distance. The market is huge but it’s good if you are looking for local stuff. There are 2 lists of food that I wanted to have in Jeonju that they are in this market. 1st the Bean Sprout soup (but we couldn’t find it), 2nd the pork stuff & blood sausage (Sundae) soup.

The Market itself is good to walk around.

3. Jeondong Catholic Church
Jeonju is also known as the site of Roman Catholic martyrs. This church is huge and many tourists like to visit and take photos.

Unfortunately, the church is under construction during our visit. This church is opposite the Hanok Village.

4. DAEDUNSAN Mountain, MUST GO – MUST SEE – MUST DO! The mountain is about an hour drive from the Hanok Village, it would hard if you travel without a car.

You have the choice of taking the cable car or hike up. But it’s only halfway!

After the cable car, you have to hike and climb up for another hour! The highlight of this mountain is the steep steel ladder (but if you are afraid of height, you can take another way around). The view from the top is great. It was a very nice hike on a beautiful day in October!

Cable car website (please check before you go): http://daedunsancablecar.com/?lang=en
No Pets Allowed for ridding the cable car. There are many food shops or restaurants around that area – We had the best mushroom soup and we did try the fried Ginseng!

Read more about our hiking at Daedunsan: https://www.somethingjam.com/daedunsan-jeonju-south-korea

5. Maisan Moutain to visit the Stone pagodas temple “Tapsa”. If you visit only the temple, it was just right enough for a walk but if you plan to walk over the Maisan – prepare another hiking day!
The Tapsa Temple is a magical temple in which the stone pagodas were built without any glue, cement, or furrows to upside-down icicles!!!

There are more than 80 stone pagodas or stone-stacked towers that are more than 15 meters high but have not faltered despite typhoons and strong winds!!!

Some of them are even on top of the mountain – who can go to stack stones up there!?!?

There are 2 ways to access the temple, we followed our car GPS and park on the street market. There are many shops and food. Especially, the wooden furniture and decoration shop!!!

After visiting the temple, we also walk up to the other temple and climb up to the cave.

Maisan Mountain has 2 rock peaks, they said one is Male Peak at 680m high and another one is Female Peak at 686m high (Female is higher!) We went up there to halfway for visiting the small cave. We didn’t go to the top because we were out of the water!

Overall we took 2hrs walk!

What to eat in Jeonju…and we did!

1. Bibimbab, the rice with all mixed vegetable bowl!
There are so many options to try the Bibimbab. There are 3 on my list but we did only one. I’m not sure the one we tried wasn’t that good or Bibimbab is not my passion Korean food…

We finally like the pork ribs soup at the bibimbap shop!

2. Spicy Pork bone Soup (Gamjatang)
There are 2 on my list but we didn’t go to any of them. Just because there is one shop right next to our Hotel. The soup is a little spicy but it’s perfect for cold weather! It’s a lot of works to eat the meat on the bone but in the end, we got more than enough meat to eat!

3. Sundae Gugbab, Pork stuff (an intestine part)and Blood Sausage Soup

This shop is in Nambu Market, next to Hanok village. The shop is 24hrs open!
But it could be a long line during a busy time. You have a choice of Spicy or Non-Spicy of the Sundae Gukbap soup.

The Blood Sausage or Sundae (read: soon-dae) tastes like boudin sausage! We like the spicy one!

*Don’t forget the bean sprout soup which we didn’t try it!

4. Mushroom soup at Daedunsan. This soup was accidentally found at Daedunsan mountain where we couldn’t find a place to park but they offer a free park if we eat at their restaurant.

There are mixed mushrooms soup (no meat), it’s great! it finally became the best soup for our hiking trip.

5. Choco pie, I just saw many choco pies in Hanok Village. Some shop offers the class that you can make your own choco pie.

But it was just too sweet chocolate pie for me…

6. Rice Wine (Makgori). I got a lot of advice to try the rice wine at their factory in Jeonju but we didn’t. We only had one bottle at the restaurant.

The rice wine without shaking is clear water, it won’t make you drunken. But if you shake it, it becomes like milk water and can give you a great alcohol level 🙂

Where to stay in Jeonju with our dog!

The most famous place to stay in Jeonju is at the Hanok Home where you wake up and feel like Korean! If you don’t mind sleeping on the floor, but our backs are too old for that!

Again, we traveled with our dog. There are NOT many options but we found AVENUE HOTEL with allowed pet to stay at 5000 won extra charge per night!

We paid about 80,000won in total per night (over weekend rate), the area is very good and easy to find food and many convenient shops are around.
The room was clean enough and better than our last pensions! We had only a little hard time using the open shower room!