The first time you board a Seoul city bus, there is a decent chance you will do what travellers have done here for decades: hold out a banknote. On 183 routes, as of January 2026, there is no longer anywhere to put it. The fare box is gone.
Quick answer: Seoul buses cost ₩1,500 for the blue and green city lines with a transit card, ₩1,200 for the small village buses, ₩3,000 for red express buses to the suburbs and ₩2,500 for the late-night Owl buses. Cash — where a bus still takes it — costs exactly the same, earns no free transfers, and on 183 routes is not accepted at all. Verified 2026-08-18 against the Seoul Metropolitan Government’s own fare page and its cash-free route list.
Seoul bus base fares by service type, adult, transit card. Cash fares are identical where cash is accepted; 183 routes take no cash at all as of January 2026.
The cash discount died in 2023
For years the card fare was slightly cheaper than cash, which gave guides an easy line: get a T-money card, save a little on every ride. That line is now half wrong. When Seoul raised bus fares on 12 August 2023, the card and cash fares for city buses landed on the same number — ₩1,500 either way.
So the reason to use a card is no longer the fare. It is everything attached to the fare:
Free transfers — card only. Tap off, board a subway or another bus within 30 minutes (60 minutes between 21:00 and 07:00), and the next basic fare is free, up to five boardings. Pay cash and every boarding is full price.
The early-bird discount — card only. First tap before 06:30 takes 20% off the base fare: ₩1,200 on a city bus.
Youth and child fares — card only, and only after registering the card as a youth or child card. Cash gets a teenager the adult fare.
The 183 routes with no fare box
Seoul started removing fare boxes with 18 routes, expanded to 108 routes (about a quarter of the network) on 1 March 2023, and the city’s official list — updated January 2026 — now names 183 cash-free routes. There is no pattern a visitor could usefully memorise; the list mixes blue, green and night routes across the whole network. The practical reading is simpler: assume any bus you board might be cash-free, and carry a loaded T-money card so it never matters.
If you board one with no card, the official fallbacks are a QR code posted at stops and on board for installing a mobile transit-card app, or a payment slip with an account number to transfer the fare later. Both exist; neither is something you want to be attempting at the front of a bus with your luggage. This is the strongest practical argument for putting ₩10,000 on a transit card at the airport before you do anything else.
What the fare table actually says
All figures are adult base fares from the city’s fare page, checked 2026-08-18. The rates themselves date from the 12 August 2023 adjustment and have not moved since.
Bus type
Card
Cash
Early bird (card only)
Blue & green (city)
₩1,500
₩1,500
₩1,200
Village (마을)
₩1,200
₩1,200
₩960
Red (express)
₩3,000
₩3,000
₩2,400
Owl (late night)
₩2,500
₩2,500
—
Distance charges apply past 10 km on a transfer journey — ₩100 per 5 km — which is why a long cross-city trip sometimes costs slightly more than the base fare. The mechanics are the same ones covered in the subway fare guide.
Before you go
Load a T-money card before your first bus. The fare is the same as cash; everything else about it is better.
Transfers are free card-only, within 30 minutes of tapping off — so tap off at the rear door, even when nobody checks.
Do not plan around paying cash. 183 routes will refuse it, and the rest give you nothing for it.
This article was verified on 2026-08-18. If you find something here that’s changed, I’d like to know, through the contact page.
Sources and last verification
Prices, fares and hours in Korea change often. Everything above was checked against these sources on the dates shown. If you spot something out of date, please tell me via the contact page.
I was born in Korea and still live here. Travelling abroad, I have been the person stuck at a ticket machine in a language I could not read, holding up the queue and guessing — and I know how small a thing it takes to ruin an afternoon. This site exists so that visitors to Korea do not have to guess. Every price, route and rule here is checked against an official source before it is published, and dated so you can see how current it is.
Updated 29 September 2026. Today is the prepaid card’s last usable day. Below the timeline, this article has been rewritten around what exists after 1 October: the short-term passes, which continue unchanged, and which most visitors were buying anyway. Two questions this page previously listed as unconfirmed — the refund procedure and whether any migration exists — now have answers, and both are below.
Quick answer: Seoul’s Climate Card shut down in stages — the prepaid 30-day pass can be loaded until 31 August 2026 and used until 29 September; the postpaid card works until 30 September; the program ends entirely on 1 October 2026. The short-term tourist passes (1, 2, 3, 5 and 7 days) are not being discontinued — most visitors are unaffected. Re-checked against the Seoul city FAQ on 12 August 2026.
If you have read that Seoul’s Climate Card is being discontinued, that is about a third true — and the dates attached to it are mostly wrong.
Seoul is retiring the 30-day pass and the postpaid card. The short-term passes — 1, 2, 3, 5 and 7 days — continue as normal. Those are the ones nearly every visitor buys. If your trip is under a week, none of this affects you.
The dates are the second problem. Seoul extended the shutdown schedule on 28 July, after most of the English coverage had already been written. Some of that coverage now tells readers a deadline has passed when it has not.
The current schedule
What
Date
Last day to recharge
31 August 2026
Prepaid card — last day of use
29 September 2026
Postpaid card — last day of use
30 September 2026
Service ends completely
1 October 2026
These come from the Seoul Metropolitan Government’s own shutdown FAQ, which is the only source worth trusting on this right now.
Two details on that page are worth knowing, and neither appears in any English coverage we found. First, on the last charging day — 31 August — you can no longer choose a start date for the pass; the charge simply runs from that point. Second, the FAQ’s own text describes the postpaid card as valid for “usage from 1 to 31 September.” There is no 31 September. The table further down the same page says 30 September, which is the date to go by.
The Climate Card winds down in stages: last recharge 31 August 2026, prepaid use until 29 September, postpaid until 30 September, programme ends 1 October.
What to do if you are holding one
Travelling in October or later: the 30-day pass is gone. Buy a short-term Climate Card instead — the section below has the prices and the traps — or a plain T-money card.
Holding an unused prepaid balance: you had to stop the card within its validity period to get anything back. Seoul’s page is explicit that a refund after the period expires is not possible, including for a lost or faulty card.
Holding the postpaid version: nothing to do. From 1 October it simply reverts to an ordinary postpaid transit card — the travel function continues, the discount does not.
Holding a ₩3,000 physical card: the card fee is not refundable. Seoul ran an exchange at twelve subway stations from 1 September to 2 October, swapping old physical cards for the replacement product one-for-one at no charge.
What replaced it — and why it is not for you
The 30-day pass was not simply cancelled. Seoul folded it into the national scheme, launching a combined product on 1 September 2026. Seoul’s stated reason was that two parallel transit-subsidy programmes had become confusing and needed a single administrator.
For a visitor, the relevant fact is the eligibility rule. The national scheme is a reimbursement programme for residents: you must be 19 or older, live in a participating municipality, and register — and registration requires a foreign resident registration number. The refund arrives the following month, and in most cases you need 15 or more trips in a calendar month to qualify at all. A four-day visitor cannot register and would not qualify if they could.
So the practical answer for anyone reading this from outside Korea is the same as it was before: the short-term Climate Card, unchanged.
The short-term pass, in full
Seoul’s own page for this product is now titled “Climate Card (short-term pass)” — the 30-day rows have been removed from it. Prices, read from that page on 29 September 2026:
Pass
Price
1 day
₩5,000
2 days
₩8,000
3 days
₩10,000
5 days
₩15,000
7 days
₩20,000 (₩13,000 for ages 13–18)
Physical card itself
₩3,000, non-refundable
Against a ₩1,550 subway fare, the three-day pass breaks even at about 2.2 journeys a day and the seven-day at about 1.8 — before adding the ₩3,000 card. Most visitors clear that easily. What catches them is the coverage.
Three rules, all from Seoul’s page:
Validity runs from the moment you load it. You cannot pre-purchase for a later start date, and you cannot reload until the current period expires.
Subway coverage is Seoul only. Excluded: Sinbundang Line, GTX, all subway outside Seoul, express and airport buses, and buses licensed by other municipalities.
Buses work differently from the subway. A Seoul-licensed city or village bus is covered even when you board or alight outside Seoul. The subway is not.
Two traps worth the price of the pass
Incheon Airport is alighting only. The pass covers arrival at Terminal 1 and Terminal 2 on the airport railway — and explicitly does not cover boarding there. Seoul’s page states it as an exception in both directions: you may ride out to the airport and tap off, but you cannot start a journey at the airport. So the pass does not get you into the city when you land. Budget for that trip separately.
Alighting outside Seoul costs you the whole fare. Seoul’s page gives its own worked example: board at Jongno 3-ga, alight at Indeogwon in Gyeonggi, and the Climate Card does not apply — station staff collect the fare for the entire journey, not the portion outside the zone. A single mistaken stop can cost more than the day’s pass saved. And failing to tap off twice suspends the card for 24 hours.
Can a visitor actually buy one?
Yes, and this changed in March 2026 in a way almost no English guidance reflects.
Seoul announced on 17 March 2026 that internationally issued Visa and Mastercard are accepted at 440 new ticket vending machines across 273 stations on Lines 1 to 8, for buying Climate Cards and for recharging short-term passes — no Korean bank account, no Korean phone number, no cash. Kakao Pay and Naver Pay are supported too. Seoul put the service fee at roughly 3.7%. The announcement noted that adding 30-day passes to this would be considered later; that question is now moot.
The mobile version is a different story. It runs on Android only, requires OS 12 or above, and its accepted payment methods are a Korean bank transfer or a credit or debit card in your own name, issued in Korea. A short-term visitor is effectively locked out of the app and should buy the physical card.
Where to buy: the new ticket machines inside Line 1–8 stations, or convenience stores near Line 9, Ui-Sinseol and Sillim line stations. Note that recharging is not available at Korail, airport railway, Sinbundang or GTX stations — which is the other half of why the airport is not a starting point.
Refunds, and the rule for foreigners
This is one of the two things this page could not answer in August.
The formula is: amount loaded, minus transit actually used, minus a ₩500 fee. Two conditions attach. You must apply within the validity period — after expiry there is no refund, and Seoul says that covers lost and faulty cards too. And a physical card must have been registered on the T-money card and payment site, one card per person; an unregistered card cannot be refunded at all.
Then the line that matters most here, stated on Seoul’s own page: a foreigner without a Korean bank account must visit T-money’s head office in person for a cash refund.
For a short-term pass this is usually not worth doing. The pass is a fixed-price product rather than a stored balance, the fee eats a small refund, and the ₩3,000 card fee is gone regardless. Buy the duration you will actually use.
Where the wrong dates came from
The Korea JoongAng Daily, 7 July: prepaid cards “can be used until Aug. 29,” and “the last day to recharge them is July 31.” That was published three weeks before the extension, and is still uncorrected at the time of writing.
The Korea Times, 21 July: prepaid until “the end of this month,” postpaid until “the end of next month.” Also written before the change.
Two English travel guides, FlipKorea and Kowork, still list 31 July, 29 August and a 1 September shutdown — with no update date shown on the page at all.
None of these were wrong when they were published. They were overtaken. That is the recurring failure with Korean transit policy in English: the revision never travels as far as the original announcement, and there is rarely a dateline to tell you which one you are reading.
Common questions
Did Seoul’s Climate Card end in October 2026? The 30-day pass did, on 1 October 2026. The short-term passes — 1, 2, 3, 5 and 7 days — continue unchanged, and Seoul’s own page for the product is now titled “Climate Card (short-term pass).” Most visitors are unaffected.
What does a short-term Climate Card cost? ₩5,000 for one day, ₩8,000 for two, ₩10,000 for three, ₩15,000 for five and ₩20,000 for seven, plus ₩3,000 for the physical card, which is not refundable.
Can I use it from Incheon Airport when I land? No. The pass covers alighting at Terminals 1 and 2 but explicitly not boarding there, and the airport railway does not have recharging machines. You need separate transport into the city.
Can I buy one without a Korean bank account or phone number? Yes, since 17 March 2026. Internationally issued Visa and Mastercard are accepted at 440 ticket machines across 273 stations on Lines 1 to 8, with a service fee of about 3.7%. The mobile version is Android-only and requires a Korean-issued card in your own name.
Does it work outside Seoul? Not on the subway. Board inside the zone and alight outside it and staff collect the fare for the whole journey. Seoul-licensed city and village buses are covered even outside the city; Sinbundang Line, GTX, express buses and airport buses are not.
Can I get a refund before I fly home? Only within the pass’s validity period, and only if the physical card was registered on the T-money site. The refund is what you loaded minus transit used minus ₩500. A foreigner without a Korean bank account has to go to T-money’s head office in person for cash.
Should I use K-Pass instead? You cannot. Registration requires a foreign resident registration number, the benefit is a reimbursement paid the following month, and it generally takes 15 or more trips in a calendar month to qualify.
What this article does not claim
The shutdown dates, the short-term prices, the coverage rules, the purchase and recharge locations and the refund formula were read on Seoul’s own transport pages on 29 September 2026 — including the page that now carries the “short-term pass” title. The international-card announcement is Seoul’s English press release of 17 March 2026.
Two cautions. First, Seoul’s live service-area lookup and its most recently edited guidance both describe the short-term pass as Seoul-only, while the T-money operator pages and an older city FAQ still list Gyeonggi sections such as the Gimpo Gold Line. We have followed the newer of the two, but a traveller planning a specific journey should check the official service-area lookup rather than any secondary page, this one included. Second, the exchange programme for old physical cards and the payback claim both ran to deadlines that have now passed, and are described here as history rather than as options.
We did not verify whether the mobile app permits a foreign national to register an account at all; the payment methods rule it out in practice either way. We have not confirmed whether any further fare increase is scheduled — we found no announcement beyond the June 2025 rise to ₩1,550, which is not the same as confirming none exists.
Sources
Seoul Metropolitan Government, Climate Card shutdown FAQ: news.seoul.go.kr
Hankyung, 28 July 2026, extension announcement: hankyung.com
Seoul Metropolitan Government, Climate Card (short-term pass) product page: news.seoul.go.kr — read 29 September 2026
Seoul Metropolitan Government (English), international card acceptance at ticket machines, 17 March 2026: english.seoul.go.kr
Seoul Metropolitan Government, Climate Card service-area lookup: func.seoul.go.kr
First published 10 August 2026. Rewritten 29 September 2026 against Seoul’s short-term pass page, its service-area lookup and its March 2026 English announcement.
I found out that Seoul’s subway fare had gone up by reading about it in the news. Not at a gate, not from a receipt — from an article, well after the fact.
That is a slightly embarrassing thing to admit as someone who lives here. It is also the most useful thing I can tell you about why the fare figure in your guidebook is probably wrong.
The current base fare is ₩1,550 with a transit card. A large share of English-language guides still say ₩1,400 — including, when I checked on 2026-08-05, the fare table on the Seoul Tourism Organization’s own English site.
Seoul subway base fare with a transit card, 2023–2026. The shaded window is when most English-language guides were written or last refreshed.
What the fare actually is right now
What
Amount
Notes
Base fare, transit card
₩1,550
Covers the first 10 km
Base fare, single-journey ticket
₩1,650
Plus a ₩500 deposit, refunded at your destination
10–50 km
+₩100 per 5 km
Over 50 km
+₩100 per 8 km
All figures verified 2026-08-05 against the Seoul Metropolitan Government’s transit fare page.
How we got here
The fare has moved twice in recent years, which is most of the reason so much published information is stale.
October 2023 — ₩1,250 rose to ₩1,400.
28 June 2025 — ₩1,400 rose to ₩1,550.
Guides written or lightly refreshed between late 2023 and mid-2025 landed on ₩1,400 and stayed there. Many were never revisited.
There has been no further increase since. Seoul discussed one in June 2026 — the figure floated for breaking even without subsidy was ₩2,591 — but nothing was implemented. As of 2026-08-05 it is still ₩1,550.
Lines that charge extra
Two lines add a surcharge on top of the standard fare:
Airport Railroad (AREX), on the independent section running out to Incheon International Airport
Sinbundang Line, the private line running south from Sinsa
Sinbundang is the one that catches visitors, because route apps will put you on it between Gangnam and the south without flagging that it costs more than the parallel Line 2 journey.
Other lines are sometimes listed as surcharge lines in older guides. I could not reach those operators’ own fare pages to confirm their current status — expired certificates and blocked pages — so I have left them out rather than repeat what I could not check.
Why the wrong number stays in circulation
Residents stop seeing the price
Here is the part that took me a while to notice about my own habits.
I drive to work most days and take public transport maybe twice a week. When I do, I pay with a Korean credit card that has a post-paid transit function built in. There is no balance to watch and nothing to top up — the month’s fares arrive on the card statement, bundled together, and I have not looked at a per-ride figure in years. I have not had an insufficient-balance error since I was a student.
So a ₩150 increase was invisible to me. It did not interrupt anything. It showed up as a slightly larger line item in a statement I skim.
That is the position most Korean residents are in, and it has a consequence: the people best placed to notice a fare change are the people least likely to feel one. Visitors, who tap a prepaid card and watch a balance count down, are the ones who actually see the number — and they are not the ones writing the guides.
Official pages go stale too
The instinct is to trust a government tourism site over a blog. Usually that is right. But large official sites have many pages and small teams, and a fare table is exactly the kind of buried detail that does not get revisited when policy changes.
On 5 August 2026, the Seoul Tourism Organization’s English transportation page still listed ₩1,400 for adults with a transit card. The fare had been ₩1,550 for over a year.
“It’s on the official site” is not the same as “it is current.” Check the date attached to a number, not the authority of the domain it sits on.
The number gets copied sideways
Once a figure is published, it propagates. One guide cites another, an AI-assisted rewrite absorbs the older phrasing, and a number that was correct in 2024 keeps surfacing in content dated 2026. Nothing malicious is happening. Nobody re-verifies.
What changed for visitors in 2026
You can now pay at the machine with a foreign card
Since 17 March 2026, ticket machines across Seoul’s subway accept overseas-issued Visa and Mastercard, along with Kakao Pay and Naver Pay, for buying and topping up transit products.
The hardware went in first: The Korea Herald reported 440 new kiosks across 273 stations on Lines 1 through 8, with installation finishing at the end of 2025. What launched in March was the payment feature running on them.
Two conditions worth knowing before you rely on it:
A service fee of around 3.7% applies to overseas-card transactions.
The machines handle the Climate Card short-term passes and single-journey tickets, not every product in the system.
Before this, foreign visitors generally had to convert cash to top up. If you travelled here previously and remember hunting for an ATM, that specific problem is largely solved.
What you still cannot do
You cannot tap a foreign Visa or Mastercard directly on the gate. Open-loop payment — the arrangement that works in London, Singapore and Sydney — is on a long schedule: Seoul’s published plan puts terminal replacement on Lines 1 to 8 starting in 2027, with full open-loop targeted around 2030.
You also cannot get the post-paid credit card arrangement I described above. That requires a Korean card and a credit assessment, which is not realistic on a tourist visa. Your options remain a prepaid transit card or a short-term pass.
So the balance-watching problem is a visitor-specific problem. It is not that Koreans are more careful with their transit balance. It is that most of us do not have one.
The Climate Card pass, and the arithmetic nobody prints
This is where most guides — and, until I sat down and checked, an earlier draft of this article — get it wrong.
The prices, including the bit that gets left out
The Climate Card Tourist Pass gives unlimited travel on Seoul subway and city buses for a flat price. Per the Seoul Metropolitan Government, verified 2026-08-05:
Duration
Price
1 day
₩5,000
2 days
₩8,000
3 days
₩10,000
5 days
₩15,000
7 days
₩20,000
Now the part that is almost never mentioned in English: the physical card itself costs ₩3,000 on first purchase, and that ₩3,000 is not refundable. Every break-even calculation you have read that ignores this is wrong by ₩3,000.
Why “four rides a day” is the wrong way to count
The common claim is that the pass pays for itself at around four rides a day. That number comes from dividing ₩5,000 by ₩1,550 and rounding up. It does not survive contact with how Seoul actually charges you.
Transfers are free. A journey from your hotel to a palace involving one line change is one fare, not two, as long as you board the next service within 30 minutes of tapping off. So a tourist who taps their card eight times in a day may well have paid for four journeys, not eight.
Count journeys, not taps. Here is what break-even looks like when you include the card fee and count properly:
Pass
Price + ₩3,000 card
Journeys to break even
Per day
1 day
₩8,000
6
6
2 days
₩11,000
8
4
3 days
₩13,000
9
3
5 days
₩18,000
12
about 2.4
7 days
₩23,000
15
about 2.2
The conclusion inverts the usual advice. The one-day pass is a bad deal for most visitors — six separate journeys in a single day is a punishing itinerary. The longer passes are good deals, because two or three journeys a day is simply what sightseeing looks like, and the fixed ₩3,000 spreads out.
Two things push the maths back toward the pass: journeys over 10 km cost more than ₩1,550, and if you already hold the card from an earlier trip you skip the ₩3,000 entirely.
What the pass does not cover
This is the expensive part to get wrong, and it is buried in Korean on the official page.
Incheon Airport is not covered. AREX is included only between Gimpo Airport and Seoul Station. If you land at Incheon and expect to ride in on your new pass, you will be stopped at the gate.
Sinbundang Line is excluded entirely — not “covered with a surcharge,” just not usable.
Wide-area and airport buses are excluded.
Leaving the service area triggers a separate fare collected when you tap out.
The short-term pass does not include Ttareungyi bike share, unlike the 30-day resident version.
One more thing, and it lands this autumn
The 30-day resident Climate Card is being discontinued. Per Seoul’s own schedule: top-ups run until 31 August 2026 and stop from 1 September; prepaid cards can be used through 29 September 2026 and postpaid through 30 September; the programme ends on 1 October 2026, replaced by a nationwide K-Pass-linked card.
The short-term tourist pass in the table above is confirmed to continue. But if you read anything about “the Climate Card” written before mid-2026, check which product it means, because one of the two stops existing this autumn.
Transfers, and the rules that quietly break them
Free transfers are the single biggest saving available, and they have conditions.
Within 30 minutes of tapping off, or 60 minutes between 21:00 and 07:00
Base distance of 10 km, after which ₩100 is added every 5 km
Up to four transfers, meaning five boardings, in one continuous journey
On buses you must tap off as well as on
That last one has teeth. Failing to tap off a bus does not just cost you the transfer — the system treats the chain as broken and charges you a fresh base fare. The 10 km figure is often misreported as a transfer distance limit; it is not, it is the distance your base fare covers before surcharges start.
Quick summary
Seoul’s base subway fare is ₩1,550 with a transit card, verified 2026-08-05. Not ₩1,400. It changed on 28 June 2025 and has not moved since.
Single-journey tickets are ₩1,650 plus a ₩500 refundable deposit.
AREX and Sinbundang charge surcharges on top of the standard fare.
Since 17 March 2026, kiosks at 273 stations take overseas Visa and Mastercard, Kakao Pay and Naver Pay, with a fee of around 3.7%.
You still cannot tap a foreign card at the gate. Open-loop is a 2027-to-2030 project.
The Climate Card Tourist Pass costs ₩5,000 to ₩20,000 for one to seven days, plus a non-refundable ₩3,000 card fee that most guides omit.
Count journeys, not taps — transfers are free, so the one-day pass usually loses money while the multi-day passes win easily.
The pass does not cover Incheon Airport, the Sinbundang Line, or wide-area buses.
Official sites go out of date. Trust the date attached to a figure, not the authority of the site.
Before you go
Do one thing with this: when you next read a Korean fare, price or opening hour anywhere online, look for a date beside it. If there isn’t one, treat it as an estimate and confirm at the point of use — at the gate display, at the counter, on the operator’s own page.
This article will go out of date too. It was verified on 2026-08-05. If you are reading it much later and something no longer matches what you see at the station, tell me through the contact page and I will check it.
Sources and last verification
Prices, fares and hours in Korea change often. Everything above was checked against these sources on the dates shown. If you spot something out of date, please tell me via the contact page.
I was born in Korea and still live here. Travelling abroad, I have been the person stuck at a ticket machine in a language I could not read, holding up the queue and guessing — and I know how small a thing it takes to ruin an afternoon. This site exists so that visitors to Korea do not have to guess. Every price, route and rule here is checked against an official source before it is published, and dated so you can see how current it is.
You are at the airport with ₩8,400 stranded on a plastic card and a queue behind you. The question is simple: where do you get it back, and how much of it?
Almost every English guide answers this the same way — go to a convenience store, they refund up to ₩20,000, there is a small fee. I went to look at Tmoney’s own English guide for travellers on 2026-08-05 to check the numbers.
It does not say that. It says something more useful, and one thing that will annoy you.
What the official guide actually states
Three rules, quoted from Tmoney’s own Foreigner Guide, verified 2026-08-05.
Rule
Wording
Where
Any Tmoney card sales or top-up location
Card cost
“Refund does not include the cost of card”
Fee
“The service fee of ₩500 will be charged”
You hand over the card, tell the staff how much you want back, and they give you cash in Korean won.
The card fee is gone and it is not coming back
That ₩2,500 to ₩4,000 you paid for the plastic is not a deposit. It bought you the card. Only the money you loaded on top comes back, minus ₩500.
So a card bought for ₩3,000 with ₩5,000 loaded returns ₩4,500, not ₩7,500. If you are choosing between buying a card for a two-day trip and just tapping a foreign card at a ticket machine, that ₩3,500 gap is the actual cost of the card.
Subway stations are listed as top-up only
This is the detail that sends people to the wrong place.
The guide lists three kinds of location. Convenience stores — GS25, CU, 7-Eleven, MINISTOP, Story Way, Emart24, 365PLUS. Subway stations, marked explicitly “Top-up Only”, covering the top-up machines, ticket issuers and information centres. And Tmoney Town at Seoul Station Exit 10, Seoul City Tower 1F.
The subway machine that happily took your money on the way in is not where you get it back on the way out.
Partial refunds are a separate, stricter thing
There is a second mechanism most guides never mention, and it has hard limits.
Partial refunds — taking some money off and keeping the card — are available only at Tmoney Town and Tmoney service centres inside subway stations, only for amounts between ₩10,000 and ₩50,000, only in units of ₩10,000, and only for plate cards.
Read that as a practical rule: if you want to keep the card for a future trip and pull cash off it, you need at least ₩10,000 on there and you need to go to a service centre. Anything smaller and your only option is closing the card out entirely.
The ₩20,000 figure I could not confirm
Here is where I have to be straight with you.
The convenience-store cap of ₩20,000 appears in a large number of guides, in both English and Korean, stated with total confidence. It is probably operationally true — store staff work to a float limit.
But it is not in Tmoney’s official English guide, and I could not find it on an official Tmoney page. The company’s site put a session error in front of several of its own pages while I was checking.
So: widely reported, not verified here. If you are carrying a large balance, assume a convenience store may decline and plan on Tmoney Town at Seoul Station instead. That is the location the official guide names for larger transactions, and it is a five-minute walk from the AREX platforms you will be using anyway.
Why this kind of number drifts
A cap like that is a float limit, not a policy. It lives in an operations manual, it varies by franchise and by how much cash is in the till at 7am, and it never appears in the public guide because it was never meant to be a public rule.
Then one traveller has one experience, writes it down as a number, and it propagates. The figure is not invented. It is just not the thing it is being presented as.
Not overloading the card in the first place
The better fix is upstream. The guide gives the loading rules plainly.
The limits worth knowing
Top-ups are in ₩1,000 units, from ₩1,000 to ₩90,000 per transaction
The card can hold a maximum of ₩500,000
How much to actually put on
Seoul’s base subway fare is ₩1,550, verified 2026-08-05 against the Seoul Metropolitan Government’s fare page, with transfers free inside the window.
Most sightseeing days come to two or three separate journeys. Call it ₩5,000 a day and top up in small amounts as you go rather than loading ₩50,000 on arrival because the machine offered it. Convenience stores are everywhere and the reload takes fifteen seconds.
The traveller who ends up at Tmoney Town on departure day is almost always the one who loaded a round number at the airport on day one.
Quick summary
Refunds are given at Tmoney sales and top-up locations, in cash, with a ₩500 service fee, verified 2026-08-05 against Tmoney’s official English guide.
The card purchase price is never refunded — only the loaded balance.
Subway stations are top-up only. You cannot close out a card at the machine that filled it.
Partial refunds exist but only at Tmoney Town or a subway Tmoney service centre, only for ₩10,000–₩50,000, in ₩10,000 units, plate cards only.
The widely quoted ₩20,000 convenience-store cap is not in the official guide and is not verified here.
Tmoney Town is at Seoul Station Exit 10, Seoul City Tower 1F — the named location for larger amounts.
Top-ups run ₩1,000 to ₩90,000 at a time, with a ₩500,000 maximum balance.
Budget roughly ₩5,000 a day and reload as you go rather than front-loading.
Before you go
The pattern here is one you will meet again in Korea. There is an official page, in English, with the real rules on it — and there is a much louder consensus in travel guides that is close but not the same, and that nobody re-checks.
The official page is usually shorter and less satisfying than the blog version. It is also the one the person behind the counter is working from.
Verified 2026-08-05. If a convenience store has refunded you an amount that contradicts any of this, the contact page is right there — that is exactly the correction worth having.
Sources and last verification
Prices, fares and hours in Korea change often. Everything above was checked against these sources on the dates shown. If you spot something out of date, please tell me via the contact page.
I was born in Korea and still live here. Travelling abroad, I have been the person stuck at a ticket machine in a language I could not read, holding up the queue and guessing — and I know how small a thing it takes to ruin an afternoon. This site exists so that visitors to Korea do not have to guess. Every price, route and rule here is checked against an official source before it is published, and dated so you can see how current it is.
There are at least five things sold to visitors as “the Korea transit pass,” and the marketing does not tell you which one loses you money. Most of the comparisons online also skip the two figures that decide it.
Here is the whole thing worked out, verified 2026-08-05.
The two numbers everyone leaves out
Before any comparison, two corrections.
The card itself costs money
The Climate Card Tourist Pass is advertised at ₩5,000 for a day. The physical card is a further ₩3,000, and it is not refundable. A one-day pass therefore costs ₩8,000 on first purchase, not ₩5,000.
A T-money card costs ₩2,500 to ₩4,000, also unrefundable. The Korea Tour Card costs ₩4,000. Every comparison that starts at the advertised pass price is understating by the price of a coffee, and on short trips that decides the answer.
Transfers are free, so count journeys not taps
Seoul’s base fare is ₩1,550 and transfers are free within 30 minutes of tapping off, or 60 minutes between 21:00 and 07:00, up to four transfers.
So a trip from your hotel to a palace involving one line change is one fare. Someone who taps eight times in a day has often paid four fares. Break-even tables built on “rides” are built on the wrong unit.
Journeys per day needed to break even on each Climate Card Tourist Pass, including the ₩3,000 non-refundable card.
Six separate journeys in one day is a punishing itinerary. Two or three a day for a week is just sightseeing. The one-day pass usually loses; the multi-day passes win comfortably.
What it does not cover: the Sinbundang Line, GTX, wide-area and airport buses, and anything outside the Seoul service area — where tapping out triggers a separate fare. On the Airport Railroad it covers only Gimpo Airport to Seoul Station. Landing at Incheon and expecting to ride in on it will not work.
Korea Tour Card
A T-money card with a discount programme attached. Issuance ₩4,000, then you load and pay per journey exactly like ordinary T-money. It adds 20–30% off a list of attractions including N Seoul Tower, Lotte World and Everland.
This is not a transit saving. It is a T-money card that costs ₩1,500 more and may pay that back at the first attraction you were visiting anyway. Worth it if your itinerary has two or three paid attractions on it; pointless if it does not.
M-Pass
The Korea Tourism Organization still lists it: ₩15,000 for one day up to ₩64,500 for seven, capped at 20 rides a day, and unlike the Climate Card it includes the Airport Railroad on ordinary trains.
I have to flag this one. The Tmoney pages for M-Pass would not load while I was checking, and I could not confirm it is still on sale in 2026. The prices on the tourism page have not changed in years, which can mean a stable product or an unmaintained page. Treat M-Pass as unconfirmed and check at the counter before planning around it.
At ₩15,000 a day it also needs ten journeys to beat paying per fare, so it only makes sense if the airport leg is doing the work.
Discover Seoul Pass
Not really a transit pass. It is an attractions pass with some transit attached. Per the Seoul Tourism Organization, the newer Pick 3 Basic is ₩49,000 and Pick 3 Theme Park ₩70,000, both valid five days from first use; the unlimited tiers run ₩70,000 for 48 hours to ₩130,000 for 120 hours.
Judge it on the attraction list, not on fares. If you would not have paid for three of the included attractions anyway, the transit component will not rescue it.
The thing that changes next month
The 30-day Climate Card — the resident product, not the tourist one — is being retired. Top-ups stop 31 August 2026, prepaid cards work until 29 September, postpaid until 30 September, and the programme ends 1 October 2026, with a replacement launching in September.
The short-term tourist passes in the table above are explicitly confirmed to continue. But two Seoul city pages were showing different dates while I checked, and the schedule was extended by a month at the end of July. If you are reading anything about “the Climate Card” written before mid-2026, check which product it means.
Why the dates moved
The replacement is a nationwide card, and Seoul and the central government spent July arguing about a discount band that would have left some users worse off during the handover. The result was a one-month extension agreed at the end of July.
That is why one official page still shows July dates and another shows August ones. The later page is the current one, and it is worth checking again before September.
Quick summary
Seoul’s base fare is ₩1,550, verified 2026-08-05, and transfers are free — count journeys, not taps.
The Climate Card Tourist Pass costs ₩5,000–₩20,000 for 1–7 days, plus a non-refundable ₩3,000 card.
Including that card fee, break-even is 6 journeys in one day for the 1-day pass but only about 2 a day for the 7-day.
The one-day pass is a bad deal for most visitors. The 3, 5 and 7-day versions are good ones.
The Climate Card does not cover Incheon Airport, the Sinbundang Line, or wide-area buses.
Korea Tour Card (₩4,000) is a discount card, not a fare saver — worth it only if you are paying for attractions.
M-Pass is still listed by the tourism board but I could not confirm it is on sale in 2026.
The 30-day Climate Card ends 1 October 2026. The tourist passes continue.
Before you go
If you want one rule instead of a table: buy a plain T-money card for trips under three days, and a multi-day Climate Card for anything longer, unless your plan is heavy on paid attractions.
That covers most itineraries, and it costs you nothing to be wrong by a little. What costs you is buying a seven-day attractions pass for a four-day trip because the display at the airport was bright.
Verified 2026-08-05. Pass prices and coverage in Seoul have moved twice in the last two years, so check the date on any figure you read — including this one.
Sources and last verification
Prices, fares and hours in Korea change often. Everything above was checked against these sources on the dates shown. If you spot something out of date, please tell me via the contact page.
I was born in Korea and still live here. Travelling abroad, I have been the person stuck at a ticket machine in a language I could not read, holding up the queue and guessing — and I know how small a thing it takes to ruin an afternoon. This site exists so that visitors to Korea do not have to guess. Every price, route and rule here is checked against an official source before it is published, and dated so you can see how current it is.
The plan was a coastal drive. The reality is a rental counter, a printed booking confirmation, a valid licence from home, and a member of staff saying no.
This is the single most avoidable ruined day in Korean travel, because the fix has to happen before you leave your own country and almost nothing tells you that.
The permit rule, from the road authority
You need an International Driving Permit. Your home licence alone does not work, however good your home country’s licence is.
Both conventions are accepted
There is a persistent claim in travel writing that Korea recognises only permits issued under the 1949 Geneva Convention, and that Vienna Convention permits are refused.
That is wrong. The Korea Road Traffic Authority states that since 1 January 2002, valid international permits issued by Vienna Convention countries are also permitted, with the same one-year validity. Verified 2026-08-05.
So Geneva and Vienna both work at law. If a rental desk refuses a Vienna permit, that is a company policy problem, not a legal one — but you will still be standing there without a car, so it is worth calling ahead if yours is a Vienna permit.
Validity runs from your entry date
This detail catches people who got a permit for a previous trip.
The permit is valid for one year from the date you enter Korea, not one year from the date it was issued. A permit issued fourteen months ago is still fine if you entered yesterday and the permit itself has not expired at home.
Read your permit’s own expiry too. Most are issued for one year, which means a permit obtained well before a delayed trip can lapse before you use it.
You cannot get one after you land
This is the part that closes the door.
Issuance in Korea is for Korean licence holders applying to drive abroad. There is no counter where a visiting tourist can obtain an International Driving Permit for use in Korea. If you arrive without one, there is no fix in-country — the trip becomes trains and buses.
Some nationalities cannot obtain a Geneva permit at all because their country is not a signatory. Chinese licence holders are the largest group affected, and no workaround currently exists.
Why this trips people specifically in Korea
Plenty of countries will rent to a visitor on a home licence alone, especially where the licence is already in the Latin alphabet. Travellers from those places arrive with a reasonable expectation formed everywhere else.
Korea’s requirement is not unusual by international standards. It is just stricter than the last three places you rented a car, and nothing in the booking flow tends to warn you.
What you actually hand over at the counter
Three documents, and a fourth thing they will ask for.
The documents
Your International Driving Permit
Your home country driving licence — the permit is a translation, not a substitute, and is invalid without it
Your passport
The permit on its own is worthless. People leave the home licence in the hotel safe because the permit looks like the important document.
The card
A credit card in the driver’s name for the deposit and for tolls. Debit cards are frequently refused for the hold, and a foreign card that works fine in shops can still fail an authorisation hold.
Age
Rental companies generally set a minimum of 21, with higher floors for larger vehicles and a young-driver surcharge below a certain age. These are company terms rather than a national rule, and I could not verify them against an official source — check your specific rental company’s conditions rather than assuming.
Jeju, and a rumour worth knowing about
Jeju is where most visitors want to drive, and it generates recurring claims that the rules are looser there.
They are not. Jeju applies the same permit requirement as the mainland.
In July 2026 a proposal surfaced to let Chinese tourists drive rental cars on Jeju without an International Driving Permit. Jeju Province stated publicly on 4 July 2026 that this is not official policy, that no inter-departmental review had taken place, and that implementing it would require legal amendments. A near-identical attempt in 2014 was rejected by the National Assembly.
Verified 2026-08-05: nothing has changed. If you see a headline suggesting Jeju has relaxed the rule, check whether it is reporting a proposal or a law.
Quick summary
An International Driving Permit is mandatory. Your home licence alone is not accepted.
Korea accepts both 1949 Geneva and 1968 Vienna Convention permits — Vienna since 1 January 2002, verified 2026-08-05 against the Korea Road Traffic Authority.
The permit is valid for one year from your date of entry, not from its issue date.
You cannot obtain a permit inside Korea as a visitor. It must be issued at home before you fly.
Bring permit plus home licence plus passport. The permit is invalid without the original licence.
A credit card in the driver’s name is needed for the deposit and tolls.
Jeju has no exemption. A July 2026 proposal to waive the permit for Chinese tourists was publicly disowned by Jeju Province as not policy.
Licence holders from non-signatory countries, notably China, generally cannot obtain a qualifying permit.
Before you go
Getting the permit at home takes about fifteen minutes and costs very little in most countries. The asymmetry is what makes this worth acting on: a small errand before departure, against no car at all and no way to fix it.
If there is any chance you will drive — a day trip, an island, a change of plan — get one. It costs almost nothing to carry a permit you never use.
Verified 2026-08-05. If a rental company has refused a permit that the road authority says is valid, that is worth knowing about, and the contact page is there.
Sources and last verification
Prices, fares and hours in Korea change often. Everything above was checked against these sources on the dates shown. If you spot something out of date, please tell me via the contact page.
I was born in Korea and still live here. Travelling abroad, I have been the person stuck at a ticket machine in a language I could not read, holding up the queue and guessing — and I know how small a thing it takes to ruin an afternoon. This site exists so that visitors to Korea do not have to guess. Every price, route and rule here is checked against an official source before it is published, and dated so you can see how current it is.
You land at six in the morning. Check-in is at three. Between those two facts sits a suitcase, and the internet’s answer is usually “there are lockers at the station,” which is true and not enough.
The city transit authority runs an official storage service with published prices and staff. It is barely mentioned in English. Here it is, verified 2026-08-05.
Weekday four-hour base rates at Seoul Metro’s staffed T-Luggage rooms. Open 10:00–22:00; no ID required.
Where it is
Seoul Station, Hongik University Station, Jamsil, Suseo, Myeongdong, Gimpo Airport Station and Jongno 3-ga.
That list is doing a lot of work. Seoul Station is where the Airport Railroad puts you. Hongik University and Myeongdong are where you are probably staying. Gimpo Airport Station covers domestic connections and the Jeju flight.
Open 10:00 to 22:00. No identification required to store a bag.
The size tiers are the reason to use this over a locker. A large suitcase does not fit most subway lockers, and discovering that at 6am with a queue behind you is the actual problem people are trying to solve.
The locker network, and what fits
또타라커 (T-Locker) covers 269 stations with about 5,511 lockers across Lines 1 to 9.
Locker pricing
Weekday, four-hour base:
Small ₩2,200, then +₩500 per hour
Medium ₩3,300, then +₩800 per hour
Large ₩4,400, then +₩1,000 per hour
Payment is by cash or card. There is an app for finding and reserving them.
When a locker is the wrong tool
Lockers are excellent for a daypack, a shopping haul or a coat. They are unreliable for a full-size checked suitcase, and availability at the obvious stations collapses on weekends and holidays.
If you are carrying airline luggage rather than hand luggage, go to the staffed room. The price difference is small and the failure mode is different — a locker either fits or it does not, whereas a staffed room simply charges you a size tier.
Sending the bag instead of carrying it
This is the part that changes how a departure day works.
Station to station, station to airport
There is also a delivery arm, run by the same operator. It moves bags between subway stations, and between stations and the airports.
Indicative pricing, verified 2026-08-05: ₩17,000–₩31,000 between stations, and ₩20,000–₩31,000 to Incheon Airport. The cut-off for same-day airport delivery is 11:30.
Why that matters more than it sounds
The usual last day in Seoul is: check out at eleven, drag a suitcase around a neighbourhood you wanted to enjoy, then take it on a crowded train to the airport.
Sending the bag ahead converts that into a normal day followed by an empty-handed train ride. For a group splitting the cost it is often cheaper than the taxi you would otherwise take to avoid the same problem.
At the airport itself
Incheon Airport has both coin lockers and staffed counters in the departure areas of both terminals. I could not reach the airport authority’s own page for storage while checking, so I am not quoting 2026 prices here rather than repeating figures from 2024 that may have moved.
Assume it exists, assume it is more expensive than the city, and do not build a plan around a specific number you read somewhere.
A note on the private services
You will see LugStay and similar app-based networks recommended everywhere. They are legitimate, they are often closer to where you actually are, and they use cafes and shops as drop points.
The reason they dominate the search results is that they market in English and the transit authority does not. That is a marketing gap, not a quality judgement — but it does mean the cheaper official option is invisible unless you go looking.
Quick summary
Seoul Metro runs staffed luggage storage at seven stations: Seoul Station, Hongik Univ., Jamsil, Suseo, Myeongdong, Gimpo Airport and Jongno 3-ga. Verified 2026-08-05.
Staffed rates start at ₩3,000 for four hours (small) up to ₩9,000 (XL), open 10:00–22:00, no ID needed.
Lockers cover 269 stations, from ₩2,200 for four hours, paid by cash or card.
Large suitcases often do not fit lockers. Use the staffed rooms for checked luggage.
The same operator runs luggage delivery — roughly ₩17,000–₩31,000 station to station and ₩20,000–₩31,000 to Incheon Airport, with an 11:30 cut-off for same-day airport delivery.
No identification is needed to store a bag at the staffed rooms.
Incheon Airport has lockers and staffed counters, but I could not verify current prices and have not quoted any.
Before you go
The general lesson is that Korea often has an official, reasonably priced version of a service that English-language guides skip entirely, because the official version does not advertise in English and the private one does.
It is worth ten seconds of scepticism whenever a guide recommends only private operators for something a city transit authority would plausibly run. Usually the city runs it too, cheaper, in Korean.
Verified 2026-08-05. Prices at these services have tiers I have simplified to the weekday base — check the board at the counter if you are storing over a weekend.
Sources and last verification
Prices, fares and hours in Korea change often. Everything above was checked against these sources on the dates shown. If you spot something out of date, please tell me via the contact page.
I was born in Korea and still live here. Travelling abroad, I have been the person stuck at a ticket machine in a language I could not read, holding up the queue and guessing — and I know how small a thing it takes to ruin an afternoon. This site exists so that visitors to Korea do not have to guess. Every price, route and rule here is checked against an official source before it is published, and dated so you can see how current it is.
You open Google Maps at Incheon Airport, type your hotel, and the app shows you where it is and refuses to tell you how to get there.
This is not a settings problem or a connection problem. It has been true for years, it was supposed to change in 2026, and as of 2026-08-05 it still has not.
Why it happens
Korea restricts the export of high-precision digital map data — the detailed base maps held by the national geographic institute under the transport ministry.
The reason given
National security. The stated concern is that detailed geospatial data could expose military and infrastructure sites, framed around North Korea.
Google has asked before. Requests were refused in 2011 and again in 2016 on those grounds. Critics point out that sub-metre commercial satellite imagery of Korea can already be bought, which makes the security argument look at least partly like a control argument.
Either way, the practical effect is the same: Google cannot process Korean map data the way it does everywhere else, so it cannot generate turn-by-turn routes here.
The conditions are substantial. Raw data must be processed on domestic servers through a local partner and cleared before transfer. Korean coordinates must be restricted on Google’s global services. Military and sensitive facilities must be blurred in satellite, aerial and street imagery. Contour data is excluded entirely. There is an emergency suspension mechanism, and Google must appoint a Korea-based compliance officer.
Approved is not launched
This is the part every excited headline skipped.
By 19 April 2026, implementation talks had stalled, with no follow-up meetings scheduled for around two months. The Korea Herald reported at that point that Google Maps still offers no turn-by-turn navigation in Korea and that there was nothing for users yet. The ministry’s position was that the export can only proceed once Google meets the conditions.
I could find no reporting of further progress after that. So as of 2026-08-05: still no directions. If you see a headline saying Google Maps now works in Korea, check whether the article’s own text is in the future tense. Several are.
What Google Maps still does here
It is not useless, and this catches people out in the other direction.
The parts that work
Map browsing, search, business listings for hotels, restaurants and landmarks, reviews and photos all function normally. Public transit has limited support.
So you can find a place and read about it. You just cannot be routed to it on foot or by car.
The part that does not
Driving, walking and cycling directions. That is the core function, and it is the one missing.
If you are used to opening Maps and following the blue line, plan for that habit not to work for your entire trip.
What to use instead
Naver Map is the answer for most visitors, and it is not a downgrade. Naver Map has around 31 million monthly users in Korea against roughly 12 million for Google Maps, and that gap shows in the data.
Why it is genuinely better here, not just available
Korean businesses maintain their listings on Naver, not Google. Opening hours, closures, menus and phone numbers are more likely to be current. Transit routing works, including subway detail Google does not attempt.
Naver Map supports English, Chinese and Japanese, with translation extended to place search, reviews and real-time transit arrivals.
Kakao Map as the second app
Kakao Map is the other major option, and its English support is weaker — you will often need to paste Korean place names into it. It is worth having for road view and for its live subway train tracking, launched in June 2025, which shows where trains actually are across the Seoul network.
Most English-speaking visitors end up with Naver Map as primary and Kakao Map as backup. Almost nobody recommends the reverse.
One habit worth changing before you land
Search behaviour matters more than the app. Korean place names romanise inconsistently, and a search that works in one app returns nothing in another.
The Korea Tourism Organization’s transport pages list official romanisations for stations and landmarks. Copying a name from there, rather than typing what you think it should be, solves most “the app cannot find it” moments.
Quick summary
Google Maps gives no driving, walking or cycling directions in Korea, verified 2026-08-05.
The cause is Korea’s restriction on exporting high-precision map data, refused to Google in 2011 and 2016 on national-security grounds.
Korea conditionally approved the export at the end of February 2026, with conditions including domestic data processing, blurred military sites and an emergency suspension mechanism.
Implementation stalled by April 2026, with no directions live for users and no reported progress since.
Google Maps still works for search, business listings and reviews — just not routing.
Naver Map is the practical replacement, with roughly 31 million monthly users in Korea versus about 12 million for Google Maps.
Naver Map supports English, Chinese and Japanese, including transit and reviews.
Kakao Map is a useful second app but its English support is weaker.
Before you go
Download Naver Map before you fly and search for one or two places you already know, so the interface is not new to you on arrival.
The wider point is about headlines. “Korea approves Google Maps data export” is a true sentence that describes a regulatory decision, not a working feature. Between an approval and a thing that functions on your phone there can be conditions, negotiations and, in this case, a stall.
Verified 2026-08-05. This is the article on this site most likely to go out of date suddenly — if Google Maps starts routing in Korea, that is worth telling me about through the contact page.
Sources and last verification
Prices, fares and hours in Korea change often. Everything above was checked against these sources on the dates shown. If you spot something out of date, please tell me via the contact page.
I was born in Korea and still live here. Travelling abroad, I have been the person stuck at a ticket machine in a language I could not read, holding up the queue and guessing — and I know how small a thing it takes to ruin an afternoon. This site exists so that visitors to Korea do not have to guess. Every price, route and rule here is checked against an official source before it is published, and dated so you can see how current it is.
Google Maps does not give directions in Korea, so you need something else. That leaves two apps, and the choice is less obvious than the internet makes out.
The short answer is Naver Map. The longer answer is why, and what Kakao Map is genuinely better at.
Start with Naver Map
If you install one map app for Korea, install this one.
It actually supports English
Naver added four-language support — Korean, English, Chinese and Japanese — at the end of 2024, and the coverage is not cosmetic. It extends to place search, visitor reviews, real-time transit arrivals, and subway route and boarding guidance.
Reviews being translated matters more than it sounds. A restaurant with forty Korean reviews and no English ones is invisible to you in any other app, and that describes most good restaurants in Korea.
The data is better because the businesses are on it
This is the part that decides it. Korean businesses maintain their listings on Naver, not on Google.
Opening hours, temporary closures, holiday schedules, menus, phone numbers — these are kept current on Naver because that is where Korean customers look. A place that closed in March is still on Google Maps with four stars and no indication.
Naver Map has roughly 31 million monthly users in Korea against about 12 million for Google Maps. That gap is the reason for the data gap, not a separate fact about it.
What it does that you will use daily
Transit routing that actually works, with subway detail Google does not attempt: which exit to leave by, platform-level guidance, live arrival times.
Walking directions that account for Korea’s underground shopping arcades and pedestrian overpasses, which are a genuine navigational problem in Seoul and invisible on a simple street map.
Where Kakao Map earns its place
Not as your main app, but worth having.
Live train positions
Kakao added real-time train tracking in June 2025, covering 23 lines across the Seoul metropolitan network including the Airport Railroad, Sinbundang and GTX-A, plus Busan lines 1 to 4. It shows where trains physically are and the estimated arrival at each station.
On a line with long gaps between services, knowing your train is four stations away rather than “arriving soon” changes whether you run.
You will see a related claim repeated widely — that these apps tell you which carriage to board for the fastest transfer. That feature does exist in the Korean transit ecosystem, but I could not confirm it in Kakao’s own announcement, which describes train position and arrival times. Treat carriage-level guidance as something to look for rather than something promised.
Road view and alternate routing
Kakao Map’s street-level imagery is strong, and its routing sometimes proposes different options than Naver. When you are trying to find an entrance in an alley, a second opinion helps.
Its weakness is the one that matters to you
English support is thinner. In practice you will end up copying Korean place names and pasting them in, because searching in English returns less.
That is a real cost if Korean text is a barrier for you, and it is why almost nobody recommends Kakao Map as a visitor’s primary app.
What neither of them does
Worth setting expectations.
Taxis
Neither map app calls a taxi. That is Kakao T or Uber, which are separate apps with separate sign-up problems.
Replacing your habits automatically
Both apps assume some familiarity with Korean addresses and station naming. Korean place names romanise inconsistently — the same station can appear three ways across three sources — and a search that fails is usually a spelling problem rather than a coverage problem.
Install Naver Map as your primary map app for Korea. Verified 2026-08-05.
Naver supports English, Chinese and Japanese, including translated reviews and real-time transit.
Korean businesses keep listings current on Naver, not Google — hours and closures are more reliable there.
Naver Map has about 31 million monthly users in Korea; Google Maps about 12 million.
Kakao Map is a good second app for live train positions (launched June 2025, 23 metropolitan lines plus Busan) and road view.
Kakao Map’s English support is weaker — expect to paste Korean text.
Neither app calls a taxi. That is Kakao T or Uber.
Use official romanisations when searching; most failed searches are spelling, not coverage.
Before you go
Install Naver Map at home and search for your hotel before you fly. Two minutes of fumbling with an unfamiliar interface is much cheaper on your sofa than at an airport rail platform.
The broader point is that “the local app” is not a compromise here. Naver Map is not what you settle for because Google Maps is broken — on Korean data it is the better tool, and it would be worth using even if Google worked.
Verified 2026-08-05. App features move quickly; if either of these has changed materially, the contact page is there.
Sources and last verification
Prices, fares and hours in Korea change often. Everything above was checked against these sources on the dates shown. If you spot something out of date, please tell me via the contact page.
I was born in Korea and still live here. Travelling abroad, I have been the person stuck at a ticket machine in a language I could not read, holding up the queue and guessing — and I know how small a thing it takes to ruin an afternoon. This site exists so that visitors to Korea do not have to guess. Every price, route and rule here is checked against an official source before it is published, and dated so you can see how current it is.
Most Seoul taxi drivers are fine. Some are more than fine — they will chase you down the street with a phone you left on the seat.
But there is a specific scam aimed at foreign visitors, the city has been fighting it for years, and in 2026 it started fighting harder. The defence is knowing what the meter should say.
The 40% band is the one that catches people, because it covers exactly the hours you leave a bar.
A ride that shows ₩12,000 in the afternoon will legitimately show around ₩16,800 at half past midnight. That is not a scam. That is the meter working correctly, and arguing about it will only make everyone’s night worse.
The out-of-city surcharge stacks
Cross the Seoul boundary and 20% is added on top. Combine that with the late-night rate and you can reach the 60% ceiling.
A trip from central Seoul to a suburb at 1am can therefore run a lot higher than the same trip at noon, entirely lawfully. Check where your hotel actually is before you assume you are being overcharged.
Legal surcharges on Seoul taxi meters. The 23:00–02:00 band adds 40%; crossing the city boundary can stack to the 60% ceiling.
What the actual scam looks like
It is not a rigged meter, usually. It is much simpler.
The refusal to use the meter
The classic version: the driver quotes a flat price before you get in, or declines to start the meter and names a number at the end.
Metered fares are the legal baseline. A negotiated flat fare is not a friendly deal, it is the mechanism of the overcharge — and the number is always higher than the meter would have been.
If a driver refuses to run the meter, get out. That decision costs you five minutes and saves you the argument.
Where it happens
Not everywhere. The city’s own enforcement is concentrated in the places that tell you where the problem is: Myeongdong, Hongdae, Itaewon, Gangnam Station, and both airports.
That is the tourist map. If you are hailing a taxi outside a Korean neighbourhood restaurant at 9pm, you are almost certainly fine.
How big the problem actually is
Worth keeping proportionate. In one recent year the city logged 310 violations against foreign tourists, of which 301 were fare-related.
Against tens of millions of taxi trips, that is a small number — but it is concentrated in a few blocks and aimed at people who cannot easily complain, which is why the city treats it seriously.
What the city has done about it
This is the part that has changed recently.
The QR card at the airport
From July 2025, Seoul began handing out multilingual cards — English, Chinese and Japanese — at the international departure gates at Incheon and Gimpo, carrying a QR code for reporting an overcharge.
The logic is honest about the real problem: a visitor who was overcharged on day one has left the country by the time they think about complaining. Putting the report point at the departure gate is the only place it catches them.
The penalty is being raised
In May 2026 the transport ministry published a proposed rule change removing the warning-only first offence. Under the proposal a first violation would draw a 30-day suspension, a second 60 days, and a third cancellation of the licence.
Public comment closed on 17 June 2026. I could not confirm whether it has been finalised and taken effect, so treat it as proposed rather than in force — but the direction is clear.
The way to avoid all of it
Use an app
Kakao T dominates with roughly 90% of the market. The fare is calculated by the system, and there is no conversation about it.
Foreign cards often fail at Kakao T’s verification step, so either use the pay-the-driver option or use Uber, which works with your existing account and home card. Uber is pricier and less available, but it is fully insulated from this problem.
For the airport, book the official service
Seoul designates an International Taxi service for foreign visitors, with fixed fares by zone from Incheon Airport — around ₩70,000 for the closest zone in a standard vehicle, up to about ₩95,000 for the furthest, with larger vehicles more.
Booked at least 24 hours ahead, you get a confirmed driver and a price agreed in advance. That is the one context where a fixed fare is legitimate, because it is a contracted service rather than a negotiation at the kerb.
If it happens anyway
Photograph the licence plate and the meter. Seoul runs a 24-hour citizen line on 120, and the tourist helpline 1330 operates in multiple languages. Neither is published as a dedicated taxi-complaint number, but both are real channels staffed by people who can act.
Quick summary
Seoul’s base taxi fare is ₩4,800 for 1.6 km, verified 2026-08-05.
Late-night surcharge is 20% from 22:00–23:00 and 02:00–04:00, and 40% from 23:00 to 02:00.
Trips outside the city add 20%, with a 60% combined ceiling. High late-night fares are usually legitimate.
The common scam is refusing to use the meter and quoting a flat price. Metered fares are the legal baseline.
Enforcement focuses on Myeongdong, Hongdae, Itaewon, Gangnam Station and both airports.
Since July 2025 Seoul has distributed multilingual QR reporting cards at airport departure gates.
A May 2026 proposal would replace the warning-only first offence with a 30-day suspension — not confirmed in force.
Use Kakao T or Uber, or book the official International Taxi from the airport at a fixed zone fare.
Before you go
Screenshot the fare table above before you fly. Not to argue with anyone — to stop yourself arguing when the meter is right.
Most of the anger about Korean taxi fares online turns out to be the 40% late-night band meeting someone who did not know it existed. Knowing the number does two jobs: it tells you when you are being cheated, and more often it tells you when you are not.
Verified 2026-08-05. Fares change; if the meter and this page disagree, the meter is right and I would like to know through the contact page.
Sources and last verification
Prices, fares and hours in Korea change often. Everything above was checked against these sources on the dates shown. If you spot something out of date, please tell me via the contact page.
I was born in Korea and still live here. Travelling abroad, I have been the person stuck at a ticket machine in a language I could not read, holding up the queue and guessing — and I know how small a thing it takes to ruin an afternoon. This site exists so that visitors to Korea do not have to guess. Every price, route and rule here is checked against an official source before it is published, and dated so you can see how current it is.