Phone-Free Book Club in an Urban Garden

"There are no bins in Korea" is the most repeated line in travel writing about Seoul, and it has quietly stopped being true — the city is back to roughly the number it had in 1995. Here is why they vanished, where they are now, and the one thing not to put in them.

In December 2025 Seoul finished putting a step-free route into all 338 stations it runs — but that figure stops at the city's own lines. Here is what it covers, what it leaves out, and the free accessible van service that foreign visitors can book but almost nobody writes about.

Gyeongbokgung closes on Tuesdays and Changdeokgung closes on Mondays, so one of them is always open. Here is the day laid out with times, walking legs, ticket prices and a realistic total, plus the swap that saves the plan when you turn up on the wrong day.