How to Travel Korea by Train: Everything Foreigners Need (2026)
🔗 Some links on this site are affiliate links. If you book through them, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only recommend services we believe are genuinely useful for train travel in Korea.
Korea is one of the easiest countries in the world to explore by train — if you know how the system works. This guide ties together everything you need: how to book, which pass to buy, and what to do when you step off at each station.
Trains in Korea, in 60 seconds
- KTX — the high-speed network run by Korail. Seoul → Busan in ~2.5 hours.
- SRT — a separate high-speed operator on some of the same routes.
- Korail Pass (KR Pass) — a tourist-only pass for unlimited Korail trains.
Booking: the part that trips up foreigners
The official KorailTalk app supports English, but foreign credit cards often fail silently at checkout. We cover the fixes — and why a Korail Pass usually sidesteps the problem entirely — in the booking guides below.
Where this guide goes next
- Booking: Book KTX with a foreign card · Is the Korail Pass worth it? · KorailTalk not working?
- Itineraries: 5-Day · 7-Day · Day Trips from Seoul · Seoul → Busan
- City guides: Busan · Gyeongju · Jeonju · Gangneung
- Essentials: Do you need data in Korea?
More guides are published every week — bookmark this page as your hub.
🔗 Affiliate disclosure: Some links on this site are affiliate links. If you book through them, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only recommend services we believe are genuinely useful for train travel in Korea.