Four sharply different seasons over a short distance, and autumn is the one locals themselves name as the best.
October gives the most usable weather per day on the ground: dry, comfortably cool, with autumn colour as a bonus. May comes second and is usually a touch less busy.
South Korea has a genuinely cold, dry winter, a hot humid summer with a short rainy season in the middle of the year, and two brief transitional seasons that are the prettiest. Because the country is not large, the weather does not differ much between Seoul, Busan and Jeju — except that Jeju is milder and windier. Picking a month is therefore more straightforward than in its longer neighbours.
October gives the most usable weather per day on the ground: dry, comfortably cool, with autumn colour as a bonus. May comes second and is usually a touch less busy.
Chuseok and lunar new year are when the country travels home at once: intercity trains fill and some businesses close. Avoid them unless the holiday is the point, and if you cannot, book train seats ahead.
Coverage across South Korea is dense — in cities, on the metro and on the high-speed trains — and the season barely affects it. What does affect it is hiking trails in the national parks, which thin with terrain rather than with the month.
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Not if you pack for it. The cities stay walkable because it is dry and a great deal of indoor space is connected up. The upside is fewer visitors than other seasons and lower room rates.
Yes. Jeju is milder and windier: its winter is not as cold as Seoul's, though the sea wind makes it feel sharper than the reading. Summer is when domestic visitors go in the greatest numbers.
A few weeks around midyear, not the whole summer. It comes in heavy bursts between sunny days, and keeping one indoor fallback per day is enough.
