Chuseok is Korea's autumn harvest holiday, it lasts about three days, and for those three days it takes a good share of the country's shops with it. The street tells you nothing about this. Shutters down, no note, no reopening date.
Give up on the shops for those days and spend them in the palaces. During the holiday the four Seoul palaces, Jongmyo Shrine and the Joseon Royal Tombs open free, Jongmyo drops the reservation it normally requires, and the people who usually fill all of them are not in the city.
The free ticket is the smaller half of that. The reason to go is the emptiness, and where it went.
Why is everything shut?
On Chuseok morning I did charye, a short rite for the ancestors. It happens in a lot of households on the same morning, which is why the closing is so general and why nobody bothers to post a sign about it.
So a closed shop during Chuseok is not information about the shop. It's information about where the owner is. That is the whole difference between a city that has let you down and a country doing one thing at the same time, and it's not a thing you can read off a shutter.
I've never seen a foreigner in Korea during Chuseok, not this year and not before, so I can't tell you what the holiday looks like from your side of that door. I can tell you what's on mine, and then tell you where to go.
Give up on the shops and go to the palaces
Korea's heritage service opens the four Seoul palaces (Gyeongbokgung, Changdeokgung, Changgyeonggung, Deoksugung) plus Jongmyo Shrine and the Joseon Royal Tombs free for Chuseok. The dates get announced shortly before the holiday, so look them up for the year you're travelling. In 2026 the window ran four days, September 24 to 27, which was one day longer than the statutory holiday that year.
Expect that gap. The days off work and the free days at the palaces are set by different offices and don't have to match, so look them up as two questions rather than one.
Two details inside the window. Changdeokgung's rear garden is not included and still needs its own ticket. And Jongmyo, which normally sells timed slots you have to book ahead, takes you without a booking.
Don't mix this up with the other free-palace rule, which trips up almost everyone. Wearing a hanbok gets you in free all year round, on an ordinary Tuesday in March, and it comes with conditions about what counts: a jeogori plus a separate skirt or pants. The Chuseok opening asks nothing about your clothes. It just has an end date.
Akasha Note If you only do one of them, do Jongmyo. It's the one place on the list you can't normally walk into, and for those few days the booking requirement is simply gone. I'd go early in the window rather than on the last day, because the last day is also when everyone else works out that it's free.
Two of the four palaces are a short walk from Bukchon, if you want somewhere to put the rest of the afternoon: how it compares to Ikseondong down the road, one still a place people live in, the other cafés.
What stays open, and how to find a pharmacy
Convenience stores stay open through all of it, the way they do every other day of the year. Some of them also carry a small set of over-the-counter medicine: four categories, thirteen items, the pain relievers and cold medicine and antacids, one box per person, nothing sold to anyone under twelve. Not every branch has it. The store has to run 24 hours and its staff have to have finished the pharmacists' association training, so treat it as a lucky find rather than a plan.
For an actual pharmacy or an ER, don't walk the streets looking for a lit sign. Check e-gen.or.kr, Korea's emergency medical portal, or call 129, and you'll be pointed to whichever one near you is open that day. A rota runs through the whole holiday.
Department stores usually close on the day itself. The big discount marts go store by store, some on shortened hours and some shut, so check the specific branch instead of assuming anything about the chain.
If the place you'd normally eat is dark, eating on your own here is a smaller problem than it looks: where I go and which seat I take when I'm eating alone, none of which depends on one particular restaurant being open.
Where did everybody go?
Home, mostly, and it shows in the traffic numbers. The government's forecast for the 2026 holiday put nationwide travel at an average of 11.82 million people a day. That's a country-wide projection across the whole period rather than a headcount of who left Seoul, but the effect is easy enough to feel from a footpath.
Which is the part that pays you back for giving up on the shops. Places that are normally shoulder to shoulder have room in them, the palaces very much included, and it lasts exactly as long as the holiday does.
If you cross paths with anyone while you're out, say 즐거운 한가위 보내세요 (jeulgeoun Hangawi bonaeseyo). Hangawi is the old native Korean word for Chuseok, and it's on every shop banner for the week. You'll hear 되세요 in that last slot just as often, but language commentators here have spent years pointing out that a holiday is something you spend well, not something that happens to you. 보내세요 is the safer one.
Do it with a local Akasha, an app for finding local meetups and experiences in Korea, is where people list what's still running while the shutters are down, and what starts up again the moment they're back: iOS / Android
Send this to whoever you're travelling with, ideally before the two of you are standing in front of a shutter working it out from scratch.
Who wrote this. I run Akasha and write this blog from Seoul. The charye part of this piece is mine; I'm not describing anyone else's. Facts checked 2026-09-25. More at @akasha.korea.