Seoul Trivia
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96 free Seoul trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Seoul has been Wiryeseong, Hanyang, Hanseong, Keijō and Hwang Seong, and its very name just means 'capital'. This quiz covers the story: Baekje's founding in 18 BC, Yi Seong-gye's Confucian city plan, Sejong inventing Hangul at Gyeongbokgung, the Imjin War fires, Edison's palace lights, Japanese demotion, the 1946 charter and a Korean War in which the city changed hands four times. The modern city gets its due: the five palaces and Changdeokgung's UNESCO listing, N Seoul Tower, Lotte World Tower's 555 metres, Zaha Hadid's Dongdaemun Design Plaza, the Cheonggyecheon stream freed from its expressway, Namdaemun's arson, hanok villages, Jongno's bell and the Seoullo Skypark. There are questions on the 940-km subway, Incheon and Gimpo, Hodori and Ben Johnson at the 1988 Olympics, the 2002 World Cup opener, Gangnam's floods and Psy, Yeouido, Jinro soju and Sejong City. Easy questions ask which river splits the city and which district Psy made famous; hard ones want the 2005 Chinese name and the boycotting nations of 1988. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the city and its landmarks, and each question carries the sentence that supports it. Try our South Korea and K-pop quizzes next.
30 of 96 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01By tradition, Seoul's story begins in 18 BC as the seat of which of Korea's Three Kingdoms?
Baekje
Baekje's first capital, Wiryeseong, is thought to lie under the earthen walls of Pungnap Toseong in southeastern Seoul; in 475 Goguryeo seized the valley and Baekje's court fled south to Ungjin.
Q 02The word 'seoul' is a native Korean common noun meaning what?
Capital city
'Seoul' is simply the native Korean word for capital city; unlike most Korean place names it has no Chinese characters, so Chinese speakers long called it Hancheng.
Q 03Under Japanese colonial rule from 1910, Seoul was renamed what?
Keijō
Keijō, read Gyeongseong in Korean, was the city's name from 1910 to 1945; Japan also stripped it of its standing as an independent capital and placed it under Gyeonggi Province.
Q 04Which founder of the Joseon dynasty chose Hanyang, today's Seoul, as his new capital in 1394?
Yi Seong-gye
Yi Seong-gye, enthroned as King Taejo in 1392, moved the court from Gaegyeong to Hanyang; by 1396 the new capital had its main palace and a ring of walls with eight gates.
Q 05Which US general's amphibious landing west of Seoul led to the city's recapture in September 1950?
Douglas MacArthur
Douglas MacArthur's landing put UN troops behind the North Korean lines and Seoul was retaken within two weeks; the city changed hands four times in all before the front settled in 1951.
Q 06Which planned town south of Seoul has been South Korea's de facto administrative centre since 2012?
Sejong
Sejong, a purpose-built city carved mostly from South Chungcheong, has housed many ministries since 2012; a 2004 Constitutional Court ruling kept Seoul the capital by 'customary constitution'.
Q 07The hero of which Korean screen hit comes from Ssangmun-dong, a neighbourhood in northern Seoul?
Squid Game
Squid Game's Seong Gi-hun and his friend Cho Sang-woo both come from Ssangmun-dong, because creator Hwang Dong-hyuk gave them his own childhood district; it is also the setting of the drama Reply 1988.
Q 08Which mountain forms Seoul's northern edge?
Bukhansan
Bukhansan rises to 836 m on Seoul's northern rim; after the Manchu invasions exposed the capital, King Sukjong ringed its peaks with the Bukhansanseong fortress in 1711 as a royal refuge.
Q 09Which colonial landmark stood in Gyeongbokgung's grounds until 1995–96?
Government-General Building
The Government-General Building, the colonial headquarters finished in 1926, later housed the national museum; its demolition began on Liberation Day 1995, six centuries after the palace was founded in 1395.
Q 10Which king led the creation of the Korean alphabet, Hangul, at Gyeongbokgung during his 1418–1450 reign?
Sejong the Great
Sejong the Great introduced Hangul because Chinese characters fitted Korean poorly and left most commoners unable to read; the script was published in 1446 in the text Hunminjeongeum.
Q 11Which invasion saw Gyeongbokgung and Seoul's other royal palaces burn?
The Imjin War
The Imjin War, Japan's 1592–98 invasions under Toyotomi Hideyoshi, left the palace a ruin for some 270 years until Heungseon Daewongun's 1860s rebuilding.
Q 12Which Seoul palace, famed for its Secret Garden, became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997?
Changdeokgung
Changdeokgung, begun in 1405 as a secondary palace, follows the hillside instead of a strict axis; most kings preferred to live there, and UNESCO listed it for the way its halls fit the terrain.
Q 13The N Seoul Tower stands on the summit of which mountain in central Seoul?
Namsan
Q 21Which Canadian sprinter won the Seoul 100 metres in 9.79 seconds before a doping disqualification?
Ben Johnson
Ben Johnson's sample contained the steroid stanozolol and he was disqualified three days after the race; the gold and the title passed to Carl Lewis, the American he had beaten on the track.
Q 22Seoul World Cup Stadium hosted what at the 2002 FIFA World Cup?
The opening ceremony and first game
The opening ceremony and first game came to Seoul on 31 May 2002, when debutants Senegal stunned France 1–0; the stadium later staged South Korea's semi-final loss to Germany.
Q 23Whose bronze statue, unveiled in 1968, stands at the southern end of Gwanghwamun Plaza?
Yi Sun-sin
Namsan's tower went up in 1971 as a TV and radio transmitter, but its observation decks stayed shut on security grounds and opened to visitors only in October 1980.
Q 14Which 123-floor skyscraper was still South Korea's tallest building as of 2025?
Lotte World Tower
Lotte World Tower rises 555 m; it was cleared only after the government agreed to shift a runway at a nearby air base by three degrees, at Lotte's expense, to keep flight paths away from it.
Q 15Which architect designed the curving design plaza at the east gate, opened in 2014?
Zaha Hadid
Zaha Hadid's design plaza opened in 2014 as a flowing, neofuturist landmark; digging on the site exposed buried stretches of the old city wall, which were restored in the park beside it.
Q 16The Cheonggyecheon stream in downtown Seoul was restored in 2005 after decades buried beneath what?
An elevated expressway
An elevated expressway, finished in 1976, covered the stream until the city began tearing it down in 2003; within five years the fish species in the reopened water had risen from 4 to 25.
Q 17Which mayor of Seoul, later president, initiated the Cheonggyecheon restoration in July 2003?
Lee Myung-bak
Lee Myung-bak, Seoul's mayor from 2002 to 2006, made the stream's restoration his signature project; he was elected president in December 2007.
Q 18Which 1988 Seoul Olympics demonstration sport won medal status in 2000?
Taekwondo
Taekwondo was shown at Seoul and again at Barcelona in 1992 without counting for medals; the IOC voted in 1994 to make it a full Olympic sport, and it made that debut in Sydney.
Q 19What animal was Hodori, the mascot of the Seoul Olympics?
A tiger
A tiger: 'Ho' comes from horangi, the Korean word for the animal, 'dori' is a pet form used for boys, and the name Hodori was chosen from 2,295 suggestions sent in by the public.
Q 20Which country joined North Korea's boycott of the 1988 Seoul Olympics after also skipping Los Angeles in 1984?
Cuba
Cuba stayed away in support of North Korea's demand to co-host the Games; Ethiopia, Nicaragua and Madagascar also stayed away, yet 159 nations came, the most of any Olympics in the Cold War era.
Yi Sun-sin's 17-metre monument has stood in central Seoul since 1968; in 2010 a crane lifted the admiral off his column for 40 days of repairs, his first absence in 42 years.
Q 24Seoul's Line 1 subway replaced which form of transport along the old Bell Street in the early 1970s?
Streetcars
Streetcars ran through Seoul from 1899, when the Hanseong Electric Company opened a line along the street, until the network closed in November 1968.
Q 25Seoul's main international airport, opened in 2001 on Yeongjong island, is called what?
Incheon
Incheon International was built by filling in the shallow sea between Yeongjong and Yongyu islands; since March 2001 it has been South Korea's main gateway to the world.
Q 26Which district on Seoul's south bank is the city's byword for wealth and private academies?
Gangnam
Gangnam, literally 'south of the river', was mostly rice paddies until the state pushed development there in the 1970s; Psy's 2012 hit 'Gangnam Style' carried the name worldwide.
Q 27What does Seoul's Seonjeongneung park protect?
Joseon royal tombs
Joseon royal tombs: King Seongjong and Queen Jeonghyeon lie here beside their son King Jungjong, whose grave was moved from Goyang; UNESCO lists the site with the dynasty's other tombs.
Q 28Which institution has met on Yeouido, an island in the Han River, since 1975?
The National Assembly
The National Assembly moved into its hall on Yeouido in 1975; before that it sat in a colonial-era hall downtown, which now houses the Seoul city council.
Q 29Which soju brand, founded in 1924, was the world's best-selling spirit by volume in 2021?
Jinro
Jinro was founded in 1924 in what is now North Korea; uprooted by the Korean War, the company started again in Seoul in 1954 and today belongs to Seoul-based HiteJinro.
Q 30What happened in 2008 to Namdaemun, the south gate that had been Seoul's oldest wooden structure?
An arson attack
An arson attack on 10 February 2008 by a 69-year-old man, angry at the price developers paid for his land, destroyed the wooden gatehouse; the restored gate reopened in May 2013.