Korea in Spring: March, April, May

Seoul’s cherry blossoms are officially out once three flowers open on one branch of a single tree. That tree, a king cherry, stands in the grounds of the Seoul weather station in Jongno, and on the normals its flowering date is 8 April. In 2026 it flowered on 29 March, ten days early. Only four years on record have been earlier.

A trip in mid-March therefore lands before the flowering even in an unusually early year. A trip built around one exact week in April is a bet.

How the date is recorded

The three-flower day is the flowering date. Full bloom, logged from the same tree, comes later, on the day eighty per cent of the tree is open. A week to ten days between the two is the common estimate, though the weather service does not publish a figure for it.

For a visitor, this means the flowering headline marks the start. Those avenues of white in the photographs are full bloom, and they arrive after it.

Yeouido has its own reference tree, so the riverside there can flower a day apart from the official Seoul date.

Forecasts and what actually happened

Blossom forecasts come from private weather companies. The weather service records the official date afterwards.

In 2026, one private forecaster predicted Seoul would flower on 1 April. It flowered on 29 March, three days sooner, because March ran warmer than expected. A second forecaster did not give a flowering date at all, only a peak window for the central region of 6 to 12 April.

Treat any forecast as a rough guide.

Spring weather in Seoul

Figures are the Korea Meteorological Administration’s normals for Seoul, averaged over 1991 to 2020.

March is still cold at night, with an average low under two degrees. May’s average high passes twenty. Rainfall almost triples between the two, so the wettest spring month is also the warmest.

Yellow dust and fine dust

They come from different places. Yellow dust is soil blown in from the deserts of northern China and Mongolia, a natural event that peaks in spring, and the weather service forecasts it. Fine dust is pollution made of chemical particles, and the environment ministry forecasts that.

Yellow dust is a matter of days. Nationally, the spring average is 4.3 days on the national indicators service’s 1992 to 2021 figures. Its alert has changed, too. The yellow dust advisory was abolished in 2017, leaving a single yellow dust warning, issued only when the hourly concentration is expected to stay above 800 micrograms per cubic metre for at least two hours.

March is the last month of the fine dust management season that starts in December. April and May fall outside it. Forecast grades and advice for a bad day are in the winter guide.

Festivals and palace events

District offices run the big blossom festivals, and each sets its own dates. In 2026 Yeongdeungpo held the Yeouido festival along the riverside road from 3 to 7 April. Songpa’s festival at Seokchon Lake ran from 3 to 11 April. Check the district you want: Yeongdeungpo for Yeouido, Songpa for Seokchon Lake.

Late April brings the royal palace culture festival, with a different programme at each of the five main palaces and at Jongmyo. The 2026 edition ran from 25 April to 3 May.

Night viewing at Gyeongbokgung follows it. The Korea Heritage Service posted the 2026 spring season as 13 May to 14 June, closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. An early May visit catches the culture festival and misses the night viewing.

By mid-May the blossoms are long over, so one spring trip gets either the trees or a palace after dark. Each year’s dates are posted on the royal palaces site.

Daylight

Sunset moves an hour later across the season and sunrise nearly an hour and a half earlier. By mid-April it stays light past seven.

Spring public holidays, 2027

Independence Movement Day falls on Monday 1 March, and the government almanac lists the weekend before it as a three-day break. Children’s Day is Wednesday 5 May. Buddha’s Birthday follows the lunar calendar and moves each year. The almanac as published does not state it, and calendar calculators put it on Thursday 13 May.