Seoul and Busan Trip 2013 - Day 1 - Taking the KTX Train from Seoul Station, Seoul to Busan South Korea.

After exiting from the airport train, just follow the signs and directions that indicated KTX(see photo circled), where we would be catching our KTX Train to Busan.

Seoul Station is very huge, KTX Ticket office is on the upper floor while the subway(that goes downtown to Seoul) is in the basement.

We headed straight to the ticket office to collect our KTX Train tickets to and from Seoul/Busan and Busan/Seoul.

Prior to our departure from Singapore, we had booked our KTX ticket online for the 12 noon departure but as we were early, we managed to change our 12 noon departure timing to 10.50 am and please remember to ask for forward seats. The train seats cannot rotate on reaching the final destination unlike the HSR train in Taiwan, etc. Half of the cabin car's seats are facing foward (i.e. from Seoul facing busan) and half are facing backwards.

If I am not wrong, those numbered 1 to 8 are facing backwards to Seoul while those numbered 9 onwards are facing Busan from Seoul but on return from Busan to Seoul, you need to get seats 1 to 8 to have forward facing Seoul. Hope is not confusing, you can see from my tickets from Seoul to Busan our seats were numbered 12 while from Busan to Seoul our seats were numbered 4.

It is easy to purchase the tickets online, you can visit the official website of Korail Railroad to purchase your ticket.

I saw this link which is useful if you want to know how to purchase the ticket online.

Instead of buying two ways tickets, you can also buy the 1day, 3 days, or 5 days Happy Rail Pass, if I am not wrong think you can hop on and off the train without paying extra. I did not get any of these passes cause I spend 4 days in Busan. You can find out more about the happy rail pass from the official website of Korail Railroad.

Our tickets are Seoul to Busan 53,300 won per pax and from Busan to Seoul is 57,300 won per pax. So total per pax is 110,600 won (S$128.62). It is a bit expensive but the whole journey took us only about two and half hours, you can choose the slower trains that cost lesser but take longer hours to reach Busan.

After collecting our tickets, we need to look at the huge board to see which track we need to be in. The tickets does not indicate the track number, so you need to know the train number and timing to get the track number indicated on the huge board.

Based on our tickets, our train no. 129 we need to be on track 10 departing 10.50 am.

Before heading to the track, we need to buy some food for our lunch in the train. There's a lot of bakery, restaurants and even some shops selling bento. Lots of choices.

If you have huge luggages, you can use the elevator to go down the track.

Look at the small window beside the doors of the train for the correct train no. before boarding the train.

Best to be in the train at least half an hour before departure so that you can put your huge luggages in the comparment as there are limited spaces and they are filled quickly, so you might have a problem with your huge luggages as there's no way you can put on the overhead compartment.

You can bring food and drinks purchased elsewhere to eat and drink inside the train, there's also a vending machine inside the train.

You can also purchase food from the train crew pushing the food trolley along the aisle.

Overhead compartment for backpacks and small luggages only.

There's a table between seats 8 and 9, you need to request if you wanted these seats, mainly meant for family or groups.

Hope the above information is useful to you and not confusing. I guess if is a non holiday or weekend, you dont have to book the tickets online, you can purchase on the day itself.

UPDATE

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I think KTX has new routes from Incheon Airport to other parts of cities including Busan. You might want to read about it from Visit Korea's website.

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