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Cities > Seoul > 7 Things Tourists Do in Seoul That You Should Do Also...

7) See Seoul's Tallest Tower

Lotte World Tower, Seoul Sky Observation Deck & Seokchon Lake

Lotte World Tower, Seoul, South Korea

Pandemic Travel Update: After two years of being largely closed to foreign nationals, South Korea finally has reopened to vaccinated and even unvaccinated travelers. However, pre-departure and arrival testing as well as other conditions apply. If you are not in Seoul already, be sure to check this helpful guide from Korean Air for up-to-the-minute details related to your specific departure location. Double check to make sure that specific attractions of interest are open for the dates of your visit, too.

Towering over Jamsil Station (잠실역) at 555 meters (1821 feet), Lotte World Tower (롯데월드타워) is the tallest building in South Korea and one of the tallest skyscrapers in the world. If you're not familiar with Lotte, which Koreans pronounce effectively like the Italian coffee Latte, the company is a food conglomerate and one of the largest companies in the country.

Designed by architecture firm KPF and said to be inspired by the shape of Korean "ceramics, porcelain, and calligraphy," Lotte World Tower no doubt will remind most viewers of The Shard in London, although the structural designs actually are quite different and Lotte World Tower is roughly 80% taller.

For tourists, although the Lotte World Adventure (롯데월드) amusement park is next door and the Lotte World Mall (롯데월드몰) at the base of the tower also contains ten floors of shopping, restaurants, concert halls, a cinema, and an aquarium, perhaps the most unique attraction is Seoul Sky (서울 스카이 전망대). Seoul Sky provides an unheard of seven stories worth of observation decks (117/F-123/F). The most crowded space is a dizzying glass bottomed observation deck (118/F) for the insane, which is promoted as the highest observation deck with a glass bottom in the world. However, there also are multiple outdoor observation decks. Unfortunately, the outdoor sections only are open at the top, so photography through the glass walls can be challenging. To reduce reflections, place your camera or mobile as close to the glass as possible and shoot at an angle.

Lotte World Adventure & Seoul Sky Discount Options

Discover Seoul Discount Pass

In advance of your visit to Seoul, you might want to consider buying the Discover Seoul Pass Card. This pass includes access to dozens of attractions, including all of the palaces, N Seoul Tower Observatory, the Lotte World Adventure amusement park, the AREX train from Incheon Airport, a hop on-hop off tour bus, a Ttareungi bike share pass, and more. You even can load the Discover Seoul Pass Card with money and use it as a T-Money pass for the metro, public buses, and taxis rather than having to buy a separate T-Money card.

Given that the standard admission price for the Lotte World Adventure amusement park alone normally is more than the entire Discover Seoul Pass Card, the card is an obvious deal if you want to go to the amusement park. In a sure sign of its value, purchase actually is restricted to non-South Korean passport holders.

At a whopping ₩27,000 (US$21/€20/£17 or so) for adults with a miserly discount for children under the age of 13, Seoul Sky is an expensive observation deck and really only is worth considering on a sunny day with a clean sky, but it does provide a beautiful view over the Han River (한강) and the south side of the city that is quite different from the view provided by Namsan (남산공원). The top lounge floor (123/F) requires the additional purchase of a drink, as if the admission fee wasn't already painful enough, but supertall skyscrapers aren't cheap to build, either.

However, the Discover Seoul Pass Card additionally provides a 10% discount to Seoul Sky. Even a small discount is better than nothing. There also are other passes available — sometimes at a discount even — but for the majority of tourists, the Discover Seoul Pass Card is hard to beat:

Lotte World Adventure Only Buy Ticket
Lotte World Aquarium Only Buy Ticket
Seoul Sky Only Buy Ticket
Lotte World Adventure, Aquarium & Seoul Sky Buy Ticket
Discover Seoul Pass Buy Card

Most visiting Seoul Sky likely find the glass bottomed observation deck to be the key attraction, but travelgasm.com humbly suggests that the view of the contrast between the textbook Modernist highrises in Sincheon-Dong (신천동) on one side of Lotte World Tower and the tight grid structure in Songpa-Dong (송파동) on the other, is at least as interesting. To each their own.

The Free View from Seokchon Lake

If your time in Seoul provides less than perfect weather — the winter and spring often have significant pollution and sand blow in from Beijing — Seoul Sky is a bit over your budget, or you just would like a nice view of Lotte World Tower, Seokchon Lake (석촌호수) outside provides a nicely landscaped running track with attractive views of the skyscraper. Go through Arena Plaza on the first floor (1F) of the Lotte World Mall for the most pleasant and direct walk.

If the weather is cooperative and you're on a tight budget, perhaps after spending a little too much on the observation deck, you always could skip the restaurants and buy some Gimbap (김밥) — more-or-less Korean "sushi rolls" although often far more creative — from one of the stalls in the metro or grab a picnic lunch at Lotte Mart (B2F) and have a picnic by the lake.

We've mapped out the location of Lotte World Tower and the best walk to Seokchon Lake below.

How to Get Here: Take the Green Line (Line 2) or Pink Line (Line 8) to Jamsil Station. Go toward Exit 1 and 2, but instead of using either exit (to the left or right), enter Lotte World Mall and follow the signs to Seoul Sky, which has its own entrance on the same floor as the metro (B1F). The best route to Seokchon Lake is to exit Lotte World Mall from the first floor (1F) into Arena Plaza.


Cities > Seoul > Seoul Best 7 > Next: Seoul Photo Gallery... >>

Like Lotte World Tower, Seoul Sky, or Seokchon Lake? Tell your friends and frenemies on social media that you discovered it first:


All 7 Things Tourists Do in Seoul That You Should Do Also:

  • 7) Lotte World Tower
  • 1) The Palace Quarter
  • 2) Insadong & Ikseondong
  • 3) Cheonggyecheon Stream
  • 4) Myeongdong & Namsan
  • 5) Garosu-gil (Gangnam)
  • 6) Sinchon & Hongdae

Be sure to see our 7 Things Tourists Don't Do in Seoul, but You Should, too.

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  • Writing & Photos By Brock Kyle. All Rights Reserved. Verification Published 21 June 2022. Feedback.