Top Tips for Driving in Jeju and Hiring a Car (South Korea)

Do you want to hire a car and go driving on Jeju Island? I did exactly that and drove around the circumference of the island. Here are my top tips on how you can do the same…

I’ve just finished four days of driving in Jeju – it’s been great! 

Well, most of it. That full day of torrential rain kinda put a dampener on my Jeju road trip, but still, it added the moodiness and drama of the island. 

Just in case you didn’t know, Jeju is an island off the south coast of South Korea. The population is around 600,000 and it’s 45 miles across and 25 miles from north to south. It’s one of the most popular places for South Koreas to go on holiday, and I flew over from Japan to have a driving holiday in Jeju, so I could cruise all around the coast. 

I couldn’t find much information on driving in Jeju, or on hiring a car in Jeju, so I wanted to put together this post to cover everything I’ve learned in the past four days on Jeju Island. 

Why hire a car on Jeju? 

There are bus tours and public buses on Jeju, which are good according to other travel bloggers, but I wanted to drive in Jeju on my own time. I wanted to spend as long as I liked at each place, and have the independence of a car. 

Of course at the back of my mind I was worried about driving in South Korea, and how different it would be, but I’ve driven in quite a few places around the world now – how difficult could it be?

I know it might seem scary to hire a car abroad, but provided you follow this car hire advice you can enjoy the freedom of the open road, without having to worry. 

Where to hire a car on Jeju Island 

I got my Jeju car rental through AJ Cars. Mainly because they were the cheapest ones through Booking.com when I searched, and didn’t have horrible online reviews. 

I paid £91.89 for 3 days car rental on Jeju, with a 2pm pick up and drop off. Of that £52.26 was the car and £39.63 was the ‘Full Protection Insurance’.

I didn’t know at the time but this also included GPS – more on that later. 

They gave me a four-door Kia Morning, AUTOMATIC (dreams). It was scratched, dented and chipped, as most of the cars seem to be on Jeju, and so I took about 100 photos of it on my phone with the car hire place in the background as evidence. 

The guy from AJ Cars also went round the car with me and pointed out the big scrapes and told me to photo them. 

I picked it up and dropped it off at Jeju International Airport for my Jeju road trip.