South Korea / City map
The old royal city of Seoul in one Minecraft world, from Gyeongbokgung down to the top of Namsan. This Seoul Minecraft map covers 21 km² built from real OpenStreetMap data: Gyeongbokgung and Gwanghwamun Square, the hanok lanes of Bukchon, Changdeokgung and Jongmyo, the Cheonggyecheon stream, Myeongdong, Namdaemun and Seoul Station, Dongdaemun Design Plaza, and Namsan with N Seoul Tower. You spawn at the north end of Gwanghwamun Square, looking up the avenue at the palace gate. Download it for Java or Bedrock, or open it in the in-browser player on this site.
Java Edition · Bedrock Edition
01 / Overview
This map is a rectangle of about 4.4 km east to west and 4.8 km north to south, roughly the walled capital of the Joseon dynasty. The north edge runs just above Gyeongbokgung and the main buildings of Cheong Wa Dae, at the foot of Bugaksan. The south edge is about 700 m past the summit of Namsan, so the whole north face of the mountain and the tower are inside. To the west the map takes in Gyeonghuigung and Seoul Station; to the east it reaches Naksan Park, Heunginjimun (the East Gate) and Dongdaemun Design Plaza, which sits right at the edge. The Han River is about 2 km south of the map and is not in it.
Two lines organize the city. The first runs north to south: Gyeongbokgung, Gwanghwamun gate, Gwanghwamun Square and Sejong-daero, which continues past City Hall to Sungnyemun (Namdaemun) and Seoul Station. The second runs west to east: the Cheonggyecheon stream, which starts at Cheonggye Plaza about 500 blocks south of the spawn and flows about 3 km across the map to the Dongdaemun area between paths and bridges. Myeongdong and the shopping streets lie between the stream and Namsan; the palaces, Bukchon and Insadong lie north of it.
The world is generated, not built by hand. The generator reads streets, building footprints, water, parks and land cover from OpenStreetMap, turns them into blocks at about one block per meter and shapes the ground from elevation data. Unlike Shanghai or Chicago, Seoul is not flat. Downtown streets sit low in a basin, Bukchon climbs toward Bugaksan, and Namsan rises about 210 blocks above Myeongdong, so the terrain is half of what makes this map. Every building is still a simplified shape.
02 / Inside the map
The recommended starting area covers Gyeongbokgung and Gwanghwamun gate, Gwanghwamun Square with the statues of King Sejong and Admiral Yi Sun-sin, Cheong Wa Dae, Bukchon Hanok Village, Changdeokgung and its Secret Garden, Changgyeonggung, Jongmyo, Insadong, the Cheonggyecheon stream, Seoul Plaza and City Hall, Deoksugung, Gyeonghuigung, Myeongdong and Myeongdong Cathedral, Namdaemun Market and Sungnyemun, Seoul Station and Seoullo 7017, Gwangjang Market, Heunginjimun and Dongdaemun Design Plaza, Naksan Park and the city wall, Namsan and N Seoul Tower. Places marked as separate presets are outside it. Open them from the customize section below.
The spawn is at the north end of the square, about 140 m north of the seated statue of King Sejong (2009); Admiral Yi Sun-sin (1968) stands about 200 m further south. Statues are not generated, so both spots are empty paving to build on. The square was rebuilt and reopened in 2022, wider on its west side. Ahead of you, about 230 blocks up the avenue, is Gwanghwamun, the main gate of Gyeongbokgung.
The main royal palace, founded in 1395, burned in 1592 and rebuilt in the 1860s. Gwanghwamun gate was restored to its original position in 2010. Inside the walls, about 43 hectares hold Geunjeongjeon, the throne hall, about 500 blocks from the spawn, and Gyeonghoeru, the banquet pavilion on its square pond, to the west of it.
The hillside between Gyeongbokgung and Changdeokgung is packed with hanok, traditional houses with tiled roofs around small courtyards, on lanes that climb north. In the world the lanes come out as narrow streets, often 3 to 5 blocks wide, so this is the densest part of the map and the best one to explore on foot. In the real Bukchon, since March 2025 tourists may enter the busiest lanes, around Bukchon-ro 11-gil, only between 10 am and 5 pm, because people live there.
East of Bukchon is Changdeokgung, a UNESCO World Heritage palace laid out to follow its hills rather than a straight axis, with the wooded Secret Garden behind it reaching almost to the north edge of the map. Changgyeonggung adjoins it to the east, and Jongmyo, the royal ancestral shrine, lies south of both: three large walled compounds with more trees than buildings.
The stream was paved over from the late 1950s, with an elevated expressway on top from 1971, until the city tore both down and reopened the stream in 2005. In the map it runs about 3 km from Cheonggye Plaza east to Dongdaemun, a narrow ribbon of water with paths on both banks and bridges every few hundred meters. Gwangjang Market, the covered market famous for bindaetteok stalls, is a block north of it.
The shopping district is about 1.3 km south-east of the spawn, a grid of small streets between Euljiro and the lower slope of Namsan. On its rise stands Myeongdong Cathedral (1898), the first Gothic-style church built in Korea, its brick spire visible from the streets below.
The mountain fills the south of the map: a wooded ridge with the city wall along it and roads and footpaths up from Myeongdong and Huam-dong. N Seoul Tower, 236.7 m tall and opened to visitors in 1980, stands on the summit about 2.7 km south of the spawn. In the world the summit is at about Y 170 to 185, more than 200 blocks above the city streets, so the tower runs into the build limit; see the notes below.
Sungnyemun, the South Gate, was built in 1398, burned in an arson attack in 2008 and reopened in 2013; it stands on a traffic island next to Namdaemun Market. About 700 m south-west is Seoul Station, and beside it Seoullo 7017, a 1970 road overpass turned into a raised walkway in 2017, which crosses the tracks for about 1 km.
Several places people look for are on or across the Han River and outside this world. Lotte World Tower and Lotte World are about 13 km south-east in Jamsil, Yeouido with the National Assembly and the 63 Building is about 7 km south-west, and Gangnam is across the river to the south. Jamsil and Yeouido each have an area below, and the Yeouido area includes the Han River.
Illustrations. Generated worlds follow OpenStreetMap data and differ in detail.
03 / Why this city
Most city maps are flat, with all the height in their buildings. Seoul has real terrain inside its center. The capital was placed in the 1390s in a basin between Bugaksan to the north, Naksan to the east, Inwangsan to the west and Namsan to the south, and the city wall ran along the ridges of all four. Two of them are in this world. You can stand at Gwanghwamun gate, look south down Sejong-daero and see Namsan close the view, as it does in the real city, and you can climb the ridge on the old wall at Naksan Park in the east.
The second thing is the change of scale. Within a few hundred blocks you go from the large stone courtyards of Gyeongbokgung to Bukchon, where houses nearly touch across 3-block lanes, and then down to Jongno and Euljiro, where office towers line wide roads along the Cheonggyecheon. Palaces, hanok lanes, markets and towers sit side by side, and in the map you can see exactly where each one starts.
Detail is where the world falls short of the photographs. Palace halls come out as blocks of the right footprint: there are no curved roofs, no layered brackets, no dancheong paint in green and red. Hanok in Bukchon are small boxes on their real plots, without the tiled roofs that make the area photogenic, and the shops of Myeongdong and Insadong have no signs. N Seoul Tower is the clearest case. The generator gets an outline and a height, so instead of a slim shaft with observation decks you get a solid round column about 24 blocks across on a platform at Y 200, stepping up to Y 281 and Y 294, with a 2-block spike cut off at the build limit, Y 319. That is about 135 blocks above the summit; the real tower would need a top near Y 420. The illustrations on this page show the city after you build on it; the world gives you the plan, the terrain and the street pattern.
04 / Play
Challenge 01
The halls, gates and courtyards are in their mapped places. Build hipped-and-gabled roofs with dark stair and slab blocks, curve the eaves up at the corners, and paint the timber under them with green and red concrete for dancheong. Start with Gwanghwamun gate, a few hundred blocks from the spawn, then Geunjeongjeon on its two-tier stone platform.
Challenge 02
The Joseon wall, about 18.6 km in full, crosses this map in two places: over Naksan in the north-east, past Heunginjimun, and along the ridge of Namsan in the south. Trace the mapped segments, fill the missing stretches through the city with stone brick and crenellations, and you have a walking route that climbs from the basin to the tower.
Challenge 03
Start at Cheonggye Plaza and walk east along the stream for about 3 km to Dongdaemun. Hang lanterns along both paths, as the city does for the Seoul Lantern Festival each winter, and add stepping stones and small falls where the water drops. It is the best route in the map for a night-time server event.
Challenge 04
Pick one of the small courtyard plots in Bukchon and turn its box into a hanok: a stone base, timber posts, white plaster walls, a tiled roof with upswept corners and a courtyard in the middle. The plots are real sizes, so a team can rebuild a whole lane house by house.
05 / Download
Download the Central Seoul: Gyeongbokgung, Myeongdong and Namsan starting area as a ready-made world for Java or Bedrock Edition.
Step-by-step help: Java import guide · Bedrock import guide
Seoul mapCentral Seoul: Gyeongbokgung, Myeongdong and Namsan
ZIP world folder
.mcworld file
06 / Customize
Each area opens the generator with the rectangle already drawn. Move it, resize it or change the mode before you generate.
21.1 km²
The area of this map: central Seoul from Gyeongbokgung to Namsan and from Seoul Station to Dongdaemun, 21 km².
Open in generator3.5 km²
About 3.5 km² in Jamsil, 13 km south-east of the center: Lotte World Tower (555 m, the tallest building in Korea), Lotte World and Seokchon Lake.
Open in generator6.9 km²
About 6.9 km² of Yeouido, the island in the Han River: the domed National Assembly building, the 63 Building, Yeouido Park and the Hangang park along the south bank of the river.
Open in generator07 / Limits
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License. Generated with the open-source Arnis project.
Central Seoul, roughly the old walled city: from Gyeongbokgung and Cheong Wa Dae in the north to just past the summit of Namsan in the south, and from Gyeonghuigung and Seoul Station in the west to Naksan Park and Dongdaemun Design Plaza in the east. Jamsil and Yeouido are separate areas.
No. It costs $6.99 or 700 points, paid once. You keep it: the Java and Bedrock versions stay in your account to download again, and you can open it in the in-browser player on this site.
Yes. The Java download is a ZIP of about 170 MB, saved in Java 1.21.4. Unzip it so the world folder sits directly in .minecraft/saves, not inside a second folder, then open it from Singleplayer. Newer Java versions upgrade the world when they load it.
Yes. The Bedrock download is an .mcworld file of about 95 MB. Open it on Windows, Android or iOS and Minecraft imports the world. Consoles cannot import .mcworld files directly, and Mac has no Bedrock Edition, so Mac players should use the Java version.
Yes, in its real place on the summit of Namsan, about 2,700 blocks south of the spawn, but not in its real shape. It comes out as a solid round column about 24 blocks across, rising from a platform at Y 200 to Y 294, with a short spike to the build limit at Y 319. The slim shaft, the observation decks and the full 236.7 m height, which would need a top near Y 420, are yours to build, at a smaller scale if you stay under the limit.
No. The river is about 2 km south of the map’s south edge, on the far side of Namsan, so the city ends in the woods behind the tower. Generate the Yeouido area if you want the river: it includes the Hangang park and the south bank.
In plan, yes: the walls, gates, courtyards, halls and the Gyeonghoeru pond are where they are on the ground. The roofs, brackets and painted timber are not generated, so the halls are flat-topped blocks until you build them up.
Across the ground, yes: about one block per meter, so the world is roughly 4,400 × 4,800 blocks and the walk from the spawn on Gwanghwamun Square to N Seoul Tower is about 2,700 blocks in a straight line. Building heights follow OpenStreetMap tags and fall back to a default height where there are none.
Creative, at midday, with the spawn point at the north end of Gwanghwamun Square facing Gwanghwamun gate. Switch to Survival with /gamemode survival once you are in the world.
Yes. Put the Java world folder next to your server jar and set level-name in server.properties to its folder name. For Bedrock Dedicated Server, rename the .mcworld to .zip, extract it into its own folder inside worlds and set level-name to that folder’s name. Keep the OpenStreetMap attribution file that comes with the world.
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