Rina on her own, with a light on her wrist and five notebook boxes, on the Namsan Night Trail from Cheonugak to Palgakjeong

At half past five on the evening of Saturday 21 November 2026, Rina came up the steps of Exit 4 at Chungmuro Station and pulled her gloves straight. She had spent the whole afternoon walking round Gyeonghuigung on her own, so the first few pages of her notebook were already crowded with the names of palace halls. Rina is a twenty-three-year-old traveller from Japan who has been to Seoul several times, and she writes down the places she goes in boxes. On the fresh page she had opened for the evening there were five boxes already drawn, each with nothing in it yet but a name.

Yesterday she had walked Boramae Park with two friends, the first time the three of them had walked together, and the Friday before she had walked Namsan Dulle-gil by day. Namsan, the wooded mountain in central Seoul, was not new to her, but tonight she had picked a different name on the same mountain. On the train back from Gyeonghuigung she had come across a night walk run by the city of Seoul, the Namsan Night Trail (반짝반짝 남산밤길), and changed her evening plans for the single reason that it was a path with a name. It was cold enough now for her thick coat to come out, and tonight she was on her own. On the days Rina travels alone, she talks less and draws more boxes.

This piece follows Rina’s evening as she queues on her own at Cheonugak in Namsangol Hanok Village, puts a light on her wrist and walks past Jamdubong up to Palgakjeong Pavilion. When to go, where to go and how to join, and how to get down once the walk has finished up on the mountain, all follow in that order. If you are wondering whether this is an event you can go to alone, follow Rina’s evening.

The Cue — At a glance

The Namsan Night Trail is a free walk from 7 to 9 p.m. on Saturday 21 November 2026: about 3 km, taking about 90 minutes, from Cheonugak in Namsangol Hanok Village to Palgakjeong Pavilion. There is no advance booking — on the day, from 6 p.m., the first 700 people are signed up on site, so arriving for 6 o’clock takes the pressure off. The walk ends up on the mountain. Decide in advance how you will come down: the Namsan loop bus 01B if you are heading back to Chungmuro Station, the cable car if you are heading for Myeongdong.

When and where is the Namsan Night Trail? Saturday 21 November, 7 p.m., Cheonugak in Namsangol Hanok Village

The Namsan Night Trail is a night trekking event where you walk surrounded by Namsan’s night views, and this year’s second round takes place on Saturday 21 November. The first round was on Wednesday 21 October, and each round takes the first 700 people. It is a non-competitive walk with no times and no rankings, so everyone simply goes at their own pace. In English it is listed as the Namsan Night Trail, so you can find it under that name without knowing any Korean.

Open in Kakao Map — Chungmuro Station

As of 13 November 2026.

The five boxes in Rina’s notebook came from this course: “Cheonugak”, “Namsan Park path”, “Jamdubong”, “Palgakjeong”, and the last box, “The way down”. The first four were the names of the course points set by the city, copied straight across, and only the last was a box Rina had made up herself. The walk does not come back to the courtyard it starts from but ends at Palgakjeong up on the mountain, so she needed one more box for after the finish. Walking the Dulle-gil by day the week before, she had not written down a single one of tonight’s names, and for Rina a path with a different name is a path she has never walked, even on the same mountain.

Getting to Cheonugak: 3 minutes from Chungmuro Station Exit 4 to Namsangol Hanok Village, and the meeting point is Cheonugak inside the village

The subway is the easiest way to the meeting point. Come out of Exit 4 at Chungmuro Station on Lines 3 and 4, follow the signposts for about 3 minutes, and you are at Namsangol Hanok Village. The address is 28 Toegye-ro 34-gil, Jung-gu, Seoul, and Cheonugak, where everyone gathers, is inside the village. Pick the one row in the table below that matches how you are coming from where you are staying.

If you come by bus, get off at the “Toegyero 3-ga, Hanok Village” stop. The stop’s name includes “Hanok Village”, so it is easy enough to find on a map app. Whichever way you arrive — by subway or by bus — remember that the queue starts at Cheonugak inside the village, not at the entrance.

Rina came by subway. For the 3 minutes from Exit 4 to the village, she decided to follow only the signposts along the street rather than a map app. On a path she has never taken, ticking off each sign as she passes it, like a box, is how Rina likes to walk. When the signposts ran out and a hanok roofline appeared in the dusk, she did not take out her notebook — she simply gave a small nod. She reached Cheonugak, inside the village, a little before registration opened.

Chungmuro is also a station on the Namsan loop bus. The 01A and 01B are boarded at Chungmuro Station (Lines 3 and 4) or Dongguk University Station (Line 3), and both routes pass the Chungmuro Station Exit 2 stop on their way up to the Namsan Seoul Tower stop on the mountain. Reading the route map before she set off, Rina got stuck on one thing. Would the bus coming down also take her back to Exit 2, the stop it passes on the way up? She wrote the question small beside the last box, “The way down”, and decided to find the answer at the top.

How do you join? No booking — on-site registration from 6 p.m., first 700 people

You join on the day, on site. There is no advance application — registration opens at 6 p.m. on the day at the event area in Namsangol Hanok Village. There is no fee and it is open to anyone, so travellers and people on their own simply join the same queue. It is run separately from the Namsan Night Festival held on Namsan the same autumn, so that festival’s bookings and deposits have nothing to do with it. Rather than spending time on your phone looking for a booking page, this is an event where that time is better spent setting off early.

As soon as she joined the queue, Rina opened her notebook and wrote “6 p.m., queue” in the “Cheonugak” box. Then, out of habit, she started dividing the number 700 into boxes. Seven boxes of a hundred, or perhaps a few boxes of small groups, she was working out, when she realised she could not see where the queue ended and stopped her pen. The queue kept growing behind her the whole time she stood there. The number of people was not the kind of number Rina could divide tonight.

The 700 do not all set off at once. Walkers are split into small groups that set off one after another, and safety staff stand at the main points along the course. With places going to the first 700, registration can fill up before you arrive if you are late, so rather than taking your time over dinner, it is easier on the nerves to come for the 6 p.m. start of registration. That was why Rina had pushed dinner back until after the walk and reached the village a little before 6.

Standing on your own, a queue feels a little longer. There is no one to keep your place and no one to chat with while you wait your turn. Rina spent the time reading her five boxes again. She read each course name silently, paused for a moment at the last box, “The way down”, where she had written her question, and moved on. If you have come alone, run through the course and the way down once more while you queue, and once you set off you can walk just watching the lights ahead and behind.

Picking up a glow bracelet and setting off: in small groups, one after another

Walkers are given a glow bracelet and a souvenir. The city calls this walk a “Light Walk”, where everyone walks together with a light on their wrist. When 700 people climb the mountain path, each with a light on their wrist, the line of walkers becomes a procession of light. It is a sight you only get at this event, so if you want a photo, wait for the moment the procession stretches out long in front and behind. Put the bracelet on your wrist as soon as you get it and you will not need a free hand for it all the way.

Rina put her bracelet on her left wrist. When it lit up she turned her wrist this way and that, and noticed that the light was faint over the glove but sharp closer to bare skin. So she folded the top of her glove down a little and put the bracelet back on so that it sat between her sleeve and her glove. Like the box-drawer she is, she had picked the spot on her wrist where the light showed best.

Waiting to set off, she opened her notebook again, and this time she could not see a single one of the boxes she had drawn. In the courtyard, now that the sun had fully set, the paper and the lines were the same darkness. Rina lifted the notebook right up to her eyes for a moment, and then it occurred to her to look down at her own wrist. When she brought the wrist with the bracelet over the notebook, the five boxes just about appeared under its light, and alone as she was, Rina burst out laughing. Tonight her notebook could only be read with a wrist light held over it.

When her group was given its turn to set off, Rina decided to leave the start-time space in the “Cheonugak” box blank. Which group she had set off with seemed to matter more tonight than what time it had been. The wrist lights of the groups ahead were disappearing one by one from the edge of the courtyard towards the mountain. Rina pulled her gloves tight again and set off after those lights.

Walking the Namsan Park path: about 3 km, no times, at your own pace

Leaving Cheonugak, you go onto the Namsan Park path (남산공원길). The whole course is about 3 km and takes about 90 minutes. With no times or rankings, there is no need to hurry to catch up with the people in front. It is a path up to Palgakjeong on the mountain, so slow down when you get out of breath, and where safety staff are standing, follow their directions.

Rina climbed at her usual steady pace. With no one beside her to talk to, she found herself looking back every few steps. Below her, wrist lights trailed out long along the curving path. In the dark, people’s wrist lights showed her the shape of the path instead. Rina watched that line for a long while, then said to herself that the lines she would draw in her notebook tonight had already all been drawn, down there.

With a procession coming up the path, step to the edge when you stop for a photo. Rina, too, moved a step to the side each time she looked back. That way the group behind does not have to break its stride, and you get to see the procession side-on and at full length. From one of those spots at the edge, Rina took out her phone for the first time that night and took one photo of the procession of light below.

Where the path bent, a member of the safety staff stood guiding the walkers. Rina, who had been slowing down from looking back, moved to the inside of the path as directed. Walking alone, with no one to match pace with, it is easy to go too fast or too slow, but the wrist lights in front and behind did that job for her. Keeping a steady distance from the light ahead, Rina found, before she knew it, a pace of her own that was neither rushed nor lagging.

As she walked, Rina thought back to Namsan by day on the Friday before. That day she had walked looking at the colours of the trees and the autumn leaves — tonight the colours had all sunk into the dark and only light was left. By day she had filled her boxes with the names of trees along the path — tonight there was nothing to fill them with but lights. From a spot at the edge, Rina lit her notebook with her bracelet and wrote, briefly, “Day — colour, night — light” in the “Namsan Park path” box. One line to say she had walked the same mountain twice was very much Rina’s way.

Jamdubong Photo Island: dividing Seoul’s lights into boxes

The third point on the course is Jamdubong Photo Island (잠두봉 포토아일랜드). It is one of the points the city has set on this walk, after the Namsan Park path and before you reach Palgakjeong. As befits a spot with “photo” in its name, Rina stopped here too. Below the darkness in front of her, Seoul’s lights were spread out wide. There was still one stretch to go to Palgakjeong, the end of the walk, so it was also a good place to stop and get her breath back.

Rina saw those lights as lines and boxes. The long bright lines were the main roads, and each clump of lights between them was a neighbourhood. Boramae Park, where she had walked yesterday, and Gyeonghuigung from this afternoon had to be in one of those boxes somewhere. Following one main road with her finger, Rina counted the boxes one by one, and before she had passed five she laughed to see the lines scattering into the dark. Seoul was too big to draw on one notebook page.

So Rina changed the way she was dividing things. Instead of splitting the whole city into boxes, she decided to split only the places she had walked today, into three. Gyeonghuigung in the afternoon, Cheonugak in the evening, and Jamdubong, where she stood now. Three boxes fitted on one line of the notebook, and in the “Jamdubong” box Rina wrote “Palace → courtyard → here”.

If you want a photo here, try a composition with your wrist light in the foreground and the city lights blurred behind. On a dark night, shooting only the distant lights easily gives you a picture of scattered dots, but one light close up gives the photo something to anchor it. Even with no one to take your picture because you are alone, your own wrist in the frame shows you were there that night. A group will be coming up behind you, so move out of the way as soon as you have taken it. Rina, too, took one photo with her wrist in front and went straight on to the next stretch.

Arriving at Palgakjeong: the walk ends on the mountain

The walk ends at Palgakjeong Pavilion. Palgakjeong is a pavilion with an eight-sided roof at 8-1 Yejang-dong, Jung-gu, Seoul, close to N Seoul Tower. Around the upper cable car station you will find N Seoul Tower, the love locks and Palgakjeong Pavilion, and the loop bus stops at the Namsan Seoul Tower stop. The course does not walk you back to the hanok village where it started, so from here you have to pick one of the two ways down. When you move off towards the bus stop or the cable car, go slowly through the people who have finished the walk.

When Rina reached Palgakjeong, the eaves of its eight-sided roof stood faintly out of the dark in a soft light. The lights of the groups that had arrived first were gathered in dots around the pavilion, and behind her more lights were still coming up. Looking up again at eaves, at night on the mountain, after looking up at the eaves at Gyeonghuigung that afternoon, felt as if her day had been tied together by two sets of eaves. In the “Palgakjeong” box she wrote “Eaves, one by day and one by night”.

Around the pavilion, Rina stopped for a moment and went back over the way she had come. From the courtyard at Cheonugak along the Namsan Park path, past Jamdubong and up to here, she had climbed about 3 km leaning on nothing but a wrist light. She had not once worried about getting lost, even on her own, because there had always been the light of a group ahead and the light of the people following behind. If you are coming to this event alone for the first time, remember that the lights in front and behind make a steadier guide than you might think.

Now only one box in her notebook was empty: the last one, “The way down”, where she had written a question before going to Cheonugak. From the moment she had copied out the course names and drawn the boxes, Rina had known this one was tonight’s real homework. As the sweat cooled, the wind on the mountain found its way inside her coat, and Rina decided to fill the box in without thinking about it for long.

Getting down from Palgakjeong: the Namsan loop bus 01A/01B and Namsan Cable Car

There are two main ways to ride down from the top. To protect its ecology, Namsan has been closed to ordinary private cars since 1 May 2005, so on public transport it comes down to the loop bus or the cable car. The bus is not called “the 01”: it is the Namsan loop bus 01A or 01B, and both stop at the Namsan Seoul Tower stop. Even boarding at the same stop, though, the two routes head down in different directions.

After leaving the Namsan Seoul Tower stop, the two buses go past the Namsan Library stop and then split. The 01A carries on towards Baekbeom Square, while the 01B loops round the mountain and comes back to the Chungmuro Station Exit 2 stop. The cable car goes down towards Myeongdong, so choosing by where you will eat or which side you are staying on makes it simple. The cable car can stop selling tickets early depending on the day’s conditions, and weather such as strong wind can pause it or end it early, so keep the bus in mind as your second option.

Set against the event’s times: a group that sets off at 7 p.m. sharp reaches Palgakjeong about 90 minutes later, around 8.30 p.m., and the event runs until 9 p.m. The bus’s 06:30–23:00 is the time the route runs, and cable car ticket sales close before the cable car stops at 23:00, so rather than staying long at the top, it is easier to head down as soon as you finish the walk. With 700 people finishing in the same place, if one side gets crowded, switch to the other. If you are thinking of the cable car, check first that the ticket queue is not too long.

At first Rina, too, leaned towards the cable car. She thought she might see the lights from Jamdubong once more through the window on the way down. Then she read the 01B entry on the bottom row of the table and realised that the answer to the question she had written before going to Cheonugak was right there. Taking the 01B, past Namsan Library, would bring her back to Chungmuro Station, where she had come out at half past five, and the five boxes that began at Cheonugak would close into one circle at Chungmuro. For someone who divides things into boxes, there was no more satisfying ending.

In the last box Rina wrote “01B, Chungmuro”, and drew a small circle next to the question she had written before setting off. Beside it, in small writing, she added “Cable car?” and left the question mark there. If a 1,500-won bus could close today’s route into one loop, the cable car’s lights could wait for her next visit to Namsan. She did not write down when that would be.

Going up to Palgakjeong and back down on a day with no event: the loop bus and the cable car

The Namsan Night Trail is a one-day event, but the way up to Palgakjeong and back down works just the same on other days. You board the Namsan loop bus 01A/01B at Chungmuro Station (Lines 3 and 4) or Dongguk University Station (Line 3), and it passes the Chungmuro Station Exit 2 stop on the way up to the Namsan Seoul Tower stop. The fare is 1,500 won with transfers allowed, so changing from the subway is easy. If you go up by cable car, N Seoul Tower, the love locks and Palgakjeong Pavilion are all around the upper station. Coming down, just remember that the two routes split after Namsan Library, and the 01B will bring you back to the Chungmuro Station Exit 2 stop.

If you walk on Namsan on another night, pick the entrance you will use and the transport you will come down on before you start. The safety staff and the procession of 700 lights belong to the event night, so on an ordinary night it is more reassuring to walk with at least one other person than alone. If you are curious about other paths on Namsan, have a look at Lulu’s piece on the Namsan Sky Forest Trail, the accessible boardwalk that runs from the Namsan Library side. As Rina did tonight, setting off with one last box left empty for “The way down” makes choosing at the top much easier.

Back at Chungmuro Station: five boxes filled on her own

The 01B went past Namsan Library and wound down between the dark trees, and Rina got off at the Chungmuro Station Exit 2 stop. As the bus passed the Namsan Library stop, she touched the circle in her last box once with her fingertip. Having come out of Exit 4 at half past five, Rina finished the day’s route at a different exit of the same station. On the bus she had looked down at the bracelet on her wrist for a long while. The light that had been one among countless lights on the mountain looked a little shy under the lights of the bus.

Before going into the station, Rina opened her notebook once more under a street lamp. This time she could see all five boxes without lighting them with her wrist. “Cheonugak”, its start time left blank; “Namsan Park path”, split into day and night; “Jamdubong”, cut down to three boxes; “Palgakjeong”, with its two sets of eaves; and “The way down”, with both a circle and a question mark. She had walked alone, so there was no one to tell tonight’s story for her, but each box held one way of doing things that Rina had chosen.

Common Mistakes

• 01

  Looking for somewhere to apply in advance

  There is no advance booking for this event. On the day, from 6 p.m., the first 700 people are signed up on site at the event area in Namsangol Hanok Village.

• 02

  Assuming there will be places left if you turn up late

  With places going to the first 700, registration can fill up before you arrive. Rina pushed dinner back until after the walk and got there a little before 6.

• 03

  Expecting to end up back where you started

  The course ends at Palgakjeong Pavilion on the mountain. Like Rina, settle your “The way down” box in advance.

• 04

  Looking for “the 01” bus

  The loop buses down from the Palgakjeong side are the 01A and 01B. You board them at the Namsan Seoul Tower stop.

• 05

  Thinking the 01A and 01B go down the same way

  The two routes split after Namsan Library. The one that comes back to the Chungmuro Station Exit 2 stop is the 01B, while the 01A heads towards Baekbeom Square.

• 06

  Planning the day around a night market

  The Sangsaeng night market special events that the city promoted alongside the walk are held on Fridays. 21 November is a Saturday, so do not build them into that day’s route.

• 07

  Expecting the social media event

  The photo-posting event was for walkers on the 21 October round.

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