Busan Travel Guide

What does the subway cost, and does your Seoul card work?

1,600 won for one section and 1,800 won for two on a transit card, with QR tickets 100 won dearer in each case. A section is the first 10km of the journey; past that you are into two. Those fares come from Busan Transportation Corporation, the operator.

Your Seoul card works. Busan's own card is Hanaro, and a lot of guides stop there, which leaves visitors thinking they need a second card. Visit Busan lists T-money and Cashbee as accepted, transfer discounts included. So one card bought anywhere in the country covers the subway and buses in both cities.

Worth noticing what the operator does not publish. Its fare table gives the numbers but never explains what a section is, and the city tourism site gives neither. Busan is also not on Seoul's fare scale, so a guide quoting 1,550 won for Busan has copied a Seoul figure without checking.

How do you get in from Gimhae Airport?

Gimhae Airport is about an hour from downtown Busan. Visit Busan names the light rail as the best and cheapest way in, transferring to the subway at Sasang for Line 2 or at Daejeo for Line 3.

That hour is the reason many visitors arrive by train instead. Seoul to Busan on the fastest KTX services takes about 2 hours 15 minutes, city centre to city centre, with no airport at either end. For anyone already in Seoul, the train usually wins on total door-to-door time.

What is Busan actually for?

Contrast. Busan is Korea's second city and its biggest port, built along beaches and up hillsides, and it reads as a different country to Seoul despite the two-hour train between them. Where Seoul is dense and inland, Busan is strung out along water.

Haeundae is the beach the city is known for, backed by towers. Haedong Yonggungsa is a temple built onto coastal rock rather than up a mountain, which is unusual in Korea and the reason it is busy. Gamcheon Culture Village, the pastel hillside above the port, is the image most people have seen before they know its name.

Our pick, if Busan gets one full day: the coast in the morning and Gamcheon in the late afternoon, when the light is on the houses.

How long do you need?

Two nights is the honest minimum, which usually means arriving on an evening KTX and leaving on a late afternoon one two days later. Where to stay in Busan works through which end of the city to pick. A single day trip from Seoul is possible, given the train, but spends four and a half hours of it moving.

Three nights lets you add Gyeongju, an hour further up the same line, without a separate base.

Where to go next

Start with the South Korea travel guide for entry rules and getting between cities, or Seoul if the capital comes first. Detailed Busan guides follow as they publish.

Every fare and journey time here carries a source and the date we last checked it. Our approach is set out in how we choose.