Koreans Fight for Seokjojeon Tickets. Foreigners Can Just Walk In

Seokjojeon at Deoksugung — restored inside as the Korean Empire History Museum — can be seen only on a guided commentary session, and each session takes 15 people. Koreans call getting a ticket a war. Foreign visitors and anyone aged 65 or over may join on site without a reservation. It is a channel the Deoksugung office keeps open. If you are reading this as a traveller, it means you do not have to fight the booking page at all.

What Seokjojeon actually is

A neoclassical stone building at the back of the Deoksugung grounds. Gojong had it built as the Western-style throne hall of the Korean Empire’s palace, and it was completed in 1910. The interior has since been restored and now operates as the Korean Empire History Museum.

Gyeongbokgung and Changdeokgung are Joseon in timber. Seokjojeon is the empire that Joseon declared, in stone. The reception room, the emperor’s bedchamber and the grand dining room have been put back with European furniture, and the effect inside resembles nothing else in a Seoul palace. The catch is the obvious one: the interior opens only to guided commentary sessions. There is no wandering in.

If the geography of the five palaces is new to you, I have laid it out separately in Why Seoul Has Five Palaces.

How the booking actually works

Capacity	15 people per session
Booking opens	10:00, one week before the visit date, first come first served (max 5 tickets per person)
Commentary types	Standard 40–45 minutes / in-depth 65–70 minutes
Entry rule	Entry from 3 minutes before the start; no entry once the session has begun
Cost	Commentary free — Deoksugung admission of 1,000 won required (free in hanbok)

Fifteen places, released once a week, on a first-come page. Weekend sessions are the ones that disappear fastest.

The entry rule is stricter than people expect. Three minutes is the whole window, and it closes at the start time rather than at your arrival. I would be standing outside Seokjojeon ten minutes early.

Foreigners and visitors aged 65 and over

Per the Deoksugung office, foreign visitors and anyone aged 65 or over may join a session on site, with no reservation. That is the whole of it, and it is more than most Korean-language guides bother to mention.

What it does not mean is unlimited capacity. The sessions are still small, and turning up as the guide is closing the door will not work. Arrive well before the session is due to start, and treat the walk-up as something you leave time for rather than something you squeeze in.

One thing to have sorted before you get there: the commentary is free, but you have to be inside Deoksugung to take it. Admission is 1,000 won, and it is waived if you are dressed in hanbok — the same rule that applies at the other palaces, which I have set out in the hanbok free entry guide. Deoksugung is closed on Mondays.

Night at Seokjojeon is a different game

There is an evening programme called Night at Seokjojeon. It is a separate, paid, seasonal event rather than an extension of the daytime commentary, and tickets are sold by lottery on Ticketlink. It does not run year-round, and nothing above applies to it.

If what you want is simply a palace after dark, the illuminated Daehanmun and the night view of Seokjojeon come with any evening Deoksugung ticket. I have covered the night opening across the palaces in Seoul’s palaces at night.

Building half a day around it

The standard commentary is 40 to 45 minutes, which is small enough to anchor an afternoon rather than consume it.

Order	Stop
1	Royal Palace Guard Ceremony in front of Daehanmun
2	Seokjojeon commentary
3	MMCA Deoksugung
4	The stonewall path and Jeongdong

The guard ceremony runs to a fixed schedule and is the one item the rest has to be built around; the times are in the guard ceremony guide.

All of this sits within walking distance of City Hall Station, which is a different part of town from the Gyeongbokgung cluster. Give it its own day rather than bolting it onto a Gyeongbokgung morning.

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I ran a hanbok rental shop opposite Gyeongbokgung from 2015 to 2025. Deoksugung was always the palace customers reached last, if at all — it is a subway ride away and the day tends to run out first. But the one line I found myself repeating at the counter is that the ticket Koreans queue online for at ten in the morning is a ticket most of my customers could simply turn up and ask for. Very few of them knew.

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