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Choosing a travel direction
starts with where you leave from

Direction · August 2026 · 7 min read

How is a travel direction decided?

This is the thing people miss most often. A bearing isn't a property of the destination; it's a relationship between two points. Tokyo isn't east in and of itself — it's east as seen from Seoul. Seen from Fukuoka, it's northeast.

And you can't read it off a flat map with a ruler. To be accurate you need the great-circle bearing, which accounts for the curve of the earth, and the gap widens the further you go. Seoul to Paris looks like west on a map; by actual flight path and bearing it's northwest.

Does each direction have its own element?

It does. The five elements are each assigned a direction and a season, and that assignment is the skeleton every direction reading hangs on.

What falls out of that naturally is the idea of a balancing direction. Traditionally, the direction of an element your chart has few of is called a 'supplementing direction'. Heading that way does not change your chart's counts or top up your luck.

What are samsalbang and daejanggunbang?

Both are directions the year asks you to take gently. What's distinctive about them is that they don't come from your personal chart — they apply to everyone in that year alike. Whatever your age or animal, the same directions are in play.

• Samsalbang (삼살방) — the direction derived from the samhap group of the year's branch. Traditionally the side people avoided for major construction or for moving house.
• Daejanggunbang (대장군방) — the "great general's" seat, which stays in one direction for three years at a time. Also a direction where people avoided breaking ground or shifting a household.

2026 is a byeong-o year (丙午年). O (午) belongs to the fire group (In-O-Sul), which puts this year's samsalbang in the north and the daejanggunbang in the east.

Here's where the misunderstanding usually creeps in. These were never no-travel directions. They were criteria for building a house, digging into the ground, moving an entire household — things that are hard to undo. A few days away doesn't really belong in that category.

If a direction scores low, should I call off the trip?

No. If there's one thing this note is for, it's this.

A low direction score means something like "the energy of that side meets you a bit roughly right now." It isn't a signal to cancel a booking. In practice, here's how to use it.

• Build slack into the daysFewer stops per day, more time between them.
• Use colours and food as observation onlyIf you like, notice colours or dishes linked to an element your chart has few of. It promises no effect on luck.
• Put the important things on the good daysYou may not be able to change the direction, but you can change the order of the itinerary.
• Leave room on the way backDon't schedule something that matters for the morning after you land.

The point is to travel knowing. The point was never to keep you home.

Which cities sit which way from Seoul?

To make it concrete, here's a rough layout with Seoul as the origin. These are great-circle bearings, so a few may not match the impression a flat map gives you.

Leave from Busan and this whole table changes. From Busan, Seoul is northwest and Tokyo moves closer to northeast. That's why changing your origin means recalculating every bearing and every recommendation.

How do I actually use this?

There are two ways direction earns its keep on a trip.

• When the destination is still open — put a few candidate cities side by side and compare their bearings. In a "Southeast Asia or Japan this time?" sort of moment, it gives you one more thing to weigh.
• When the destination is already fixed — learn the grain of that direction and prepare for it. If the bearing can't change, tune the dates and the departure hour instead.

Set your departure city and 5htrip compares your candidates as scores across eight directions. 159 Korean cities and counties and 346 cities in 44 countries are tagged by direction and element, and a country that isn't on the list still gets a bearing from its coordinates. Change where you're leaving from and the whole thing recalculates.