Busan From Seoul: the KTX, and Whether a Day Trip Makes Sense

KTX is the high-speed service, running from Seoul Station to Busan Station in about two and a quarter hours on the fastest departures and closer to three on the ones that stop more often. It is comfortable, reliable and the most expensive routine journey in the country.

SRT is the competing high-speed operator, running from Suseo in the south-east of Seoul rather than Seoul Station, often slightly cheaper, and useful if you are staying in Gangnam.

Mugunghwa and ITX conventional trains take five hours or more and cost a fraction of the price. They are a genuine option for an overnight-style budget trip and a bad one for a day trip.

Express buses run through the night and take four to five hours; a night bus in each direction is how Korean students do it, and it is not a comfortable way to see a city the next morning.

Flights from Gimpo to Gimhae take under an hour in the air and two and a half door to door once airports are counted, which makes them competitive only if you are already near Gimpo.

It is done, and here is the version that works.

Take a departure at or before 06:00 and you are in Busan by half past eight. Return on something around 20:00 or 21:00 and you are back in Seoul before midnight. That gives roughly eleven hours in the city and about five on trains.

With that, pick one half of Busan. Either the coast — Haeundae beach, the Blue Line Park coastal railway, Dongbaek island — or the old city: Jagalchi fish market, Gukje market, Gamcheon culture village on the hillside, and the temple on the cliff at Haedong Yonggungsa if you are prepared to add a bus.

Do not attempt both. Busan is long rather than dense and the metro journeys between its districts are twenty to forty minutes each.

And book the return seat before you go. Turning up at Busan Station at nine in the evening on a Sunday hoping for a seat is how people end up on a five-hour conventional train.

Two nights. Busan is Korea's second city, it has mountains coming down to a working port, a fish market that is a genuine institution, hillside neighbourhoods with sea views, and beaches that are full in August and empty in October.

With two nights you get an evening on the coast, a full day for the old city and the markets, a morning at a temple or on a coastal walk, and the trains stop being a cost.

For a first trip to Korea with a week available, the standard shape is four nights in Seoul, two in Busan, and the KTX between them — with a stop in Gyeongju, the old Silla capital, if the week stretches to nine days.

If your trip is three or four days total, leave Busan out entirely and use the time on day trips within an hour of Seoul.