Is Tokyo further north than Seoul?

Tokyo and Seoul are close neighbours on the map, and many people think of Tokyo as the northern one: Japan stretches far north, with snowy Hokkaido at its top. But measured at the city centres, Seoul lies at 37.6° N and Tokyo at 35.7° N, so Seoul is about 210 km further north. In our deck Seoul is almost level with San Francisco and Seville, and Tokyo with Tehran. Seoul’s winters are also colder and drier, which fits its position, but not only because of latitude. In winter, cold air from the Asian continent sweeps across the region on north-westerly winds. Korea’s climate mixes continental and ocean features, and Seoul feels the continental side strongly in winter. Japan’s climate depends more on the seas around it. Here climate and latitude happen to point the same way, but the colder city is not always the northern one.