Pyongyang weather by month
The best time to visit Pyongyang is April, May and September — 88/100 in May, 23°C and 8 rainy days. The best season is spring, March to May (81/100 on average).
The worst month is January at 43/100 — freezing, dry. See January →
Updated September 2026 · climate normals from ERA5 reanalysis
Best season: March to May (81/100 on average) · worst January (43/100)
- Days
- 23°C
- Nights
- 11°C
- Wet days
- 8
- Sun
- 9.8 h
- Humidity
- 69%
- Daylight
- 14 h

Pyongyang, month by month
Comfort score out of 100 for the kind of trip Pyongyang is best for, the average high, rainy days and hours of sun a day from the climate normals, and how busy it tends to be.
What's on in Pyongyang through the year
Festivals, natural spectacles, holidays and the seasons to watch out for — curated and sourced. The month pages carry the detail.
Crowds in Pyongyang in May
How busy the place itself is — school and mass holidays, the months an editor tagged, and how sought-after the weather makes them. Never part of the comfort score.
Busyschool holidays in 2 of the markets that fill it, one of its best months for weather(estimated)
Peak crowdsBusyShoulder seasonQuiet
Traveller notes on Pyongyang
What people who have been say about the place — the year-round notes first, then month by month.
Forum posters describe May, including a May Day trip specifically, as a workable time to visit Pyongyang on one of the tightly controlled guided tours that are the only way to enter North Korea as a tourist. Posters don't detail granular daily temperatures, but May in Pyongyang generally sits in the mild, comfortable stretch between the cold winter and the humid peak-summer months, with real spring warmth by midday and cooler mornings and evenings. Posters consistently note that all sightseeing here happens on a fixed, guide-led itinerary regardless of season, so weather affects the experience mainly at the margins - which monuments get extra time, whether an outdoor event runs as scheduled - rather than determining whether a trip happens at all.
Detailed month-specific trip reports for Pyongyang are scarce on the forum, since tourism here runs exclusively through organized, closely controlled group tours rather than independent travel. Posters discussing the wider Korean peninsula's winter note that North Korea's proper winter cold sets in from December, with January averaging as low as -13C to -3C, implying November should sit in a milder transitional stretch ahead of that deep cold. One visitor's general account described extremely cold weather during their trip, though without specifying the exact month. Given the sparse destination-specific detail, this note is grounded in the well-established regional pattern for this part of continental East Asia: November as a cooling, increasingly crisp autumn month, well short of Pyongyang's harsh winter but no longer mild.
Add your own note from Pyongyang's card on the map.