The Shilla Seoul: South Korean retreat offering travellers a high luxury hide-out to escape blistering heat

ROAM’s private highlight reel from Seoul is different this time.

It’s unbearably hot. Heatwave warnings from the Korea Meteorological Administration have pinned perceived temperatures at 38C for days with no ceasefire by nightfall. The city has gone into full defensive mode.

This isn’t just an inconvenience. Heat-related illness has put over 1200 people into emergency rooms this year, five of them fatally, and sightseeing is hard work.

ROAM has sorted the survival strategy tucked along the old city wall. The Shilla Seoul is a geometric brick-built tower of cool beside steep, densely wooded Namsan Mountain.

Opened in 1979 and overhauled in 2013 by designer Peter Remedios, the hotel has become shorthand for Korean prosperity buffed to an international shine.

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Well-off Seoulites still treat themselves to a morning at Shilla’s The Parkview, the breakfast buffet earning its long-held reputation across a sprawling and borderless sweep of Korean, Japanese, Chinese and Western cuisine.

ROAM is tempted by the dim sum selection and the live-action Vietnamese noodle station but heads for the heights of the Executive Lounge instead.

This is a living and dining room, lounge and library folded into one as a climate-controlled embassy on the top floor of the property, with city on one side, mountain on the other.

The view through gargantuan windows is like eating fresh lettuce with your eyes. Obviously, there’s a whole lot more to plate when deep-seated among all those curated books on dark-wooded shelves.

We’ve sat in plenty of executive club lounges over the years. This is the pick of the pile.

Breakfast isn’t a token gesture. Afternoon tea arrives properly tiered. Happy hour — Chilean seabass, beef tenderloin, black pepper duck — is hearty enough to stand in for dinner without apology. This isn’t an add-on to the stay, it’s become the main event.

Rooms come equally well dressed with handsome cabinetry, minimal decor, traditional Korean motifs set against whichever view (city or mountain) you happen to be facing. There are roughly a dozen categories in all, though only the Executive Grand Deluxe and Executive Business Deluxe come with Lounge above.

In weather like this, Urban Island on the third floor is less an amenity, more a magnet. Pools, jacuzzis, cabanas and rooftop gardens are running at cheerful capacity.

Meditative adults might do better retreating to the indoor pool and wet sauna, or Cle de Peau Beaute Spa, where the only plashing permitted comes with a professional.

Location, of course, is everything. An extraordinary skyline presses flat against glass everywhere, needling with an urge that’s impossible to ignore. It’s time to step into the streets.

Down the slope, Jangchung-dong is ground zero for jokbal. The dish relies upon a whole pig’s trotter, braised low and slow in soy broth with garlic and ginger until the meat gives up the bone and the skin turns deliciously, gelatinously soft. It arrives sliced, with lettuce, raw garlic and pickled radish, a late-night drinking dish that asks for real commitment.

Coaxing that much collagen out of a trotter has been the local trick since the dish was conceived, in the late 50s, by North Korean refugees working out how to survive.

Enough of the low life. With a swish of doors, re-entry into The Shilla Seoul feels like stepping into a decompression chamber, crowned by Bahk Seon Ghi’s magical lobby installation. Thousands of tiny crystals are falling earthwards like a constellation of stars.

A few shimmering steps on, The Library offers more sensation with cocktails, and a jazz soundtrack later. The champagne corks are detonating already and it’s not yet afternoon so ROAM is sidling up to the locals for a silver-bowled Jeju Apple Mango Bingsu.

This shaved ice topped with fresh Jeju apple mangoes has been a fixture here since 2011, absurdly expensive at 130,000 won (about $130), but considerably more effective than a handheld fan on the street. We’ll stay put, right here.

Bottom line? Don’t come to Seoul expecting to conquer it. Come with retreat in mind. And know there’s always a Shilla shuttle on standby for whenever you’re brave enough to try the outside world again.

The Shilla 249 Dongho-ro, Jung District, Seoul, South Korea

Price Room rates from approx $590 per night

The Insider Aim for a high-floor room facing Namsan, then take an early-morning walk through the mountain/park before Seoul awakes. You get the odd sensation of starting the day in woodland before descending into one of Asia’s most frenetic cities. shillahotels.com