How to Ride the Subway and City Bus in Seoul: Fares, Tickets, and Transfers

Seoul’s transit map looks intimidating. Riding it isn’t.
It comes down to two habits: tap a card when you get on, and tap again when you get off a bus. (The subway skips that second tap.)
Fares, color codes, transfer discounts. All of it follows from that one rule.

How Do You Actually Ride the Subway and Bus in Seoul?

You board with a rechargeable transit card. Most visitors use T-money. Tap it on the reader at the bus door or subway gate and the fare comes straight out of the balance.

A single-ride paper ticket works too. It costs more, though, so it only makes sense if you’re taking one or two rides all trip.

On the current fare schedule, an adult card fare is ₩1,550 on the subway (effective June 28, 2025) and ₩1,500 on a standard city bus (effective August 12, 2023). Each covers the base distance before surcharges start. Teens and children pay less on both.

Still choosing between a physical T-money card, Mobile T-money and WOWPASS? Our Korea travel apps guide compares them.

Buses: Colors, Fares, and How Boarding Works

Seoul buses are color-coded by role. The color tells you what kind of route you’re on before you even read the number.

Board through the front door and tap your card by the driver. Exit through the rear door and tap again. That second tap does two jobs: it works out any distance surcharge, and it makes a free transfer possible.

Cash still works on some Seoul buses. Bring exact change, because drivers don’t carry a float, and cash fares miss out on the transfer discount below.

Outside Seoul, don’t count on it at all. Incheon, Daegu and Gwangju have gone card-only on every bus.

One more thing if you’re travelling with luggage: avoid weekday rush hour, roughly 7:30-9:00 AM and 6:00-8:00 PM. Platforms and buses both get genuinely packed, and a rolling suitcase is hard work in that crowd.

Subway: Lines, Tickets, and Getting Through the Gate

Every Seoul subway line has its own number and color. You navigate by color first, station name second. Platform signs, train doors and map apps all use the same scheme.

Korea has five subway systems, in Seoul, Busan, Daegu, Daejeon and Gwangju. Seoul’s is by far the largest, and some of its lines run well past the city limits into Incheon and Gyeonggi-do.

Tap your card once on the way in. There’s no second tap on the way out, with one exception: the Sinbundang Line, which runs its own transfer-fare gates and charges extra by distance.

Every other line-to-line transfer is free. Just stay inside the paid zone and change platforms without walking out through an exit turnstile.

How the Bus-Subway Transfer Discount Actually Works

Tag on and off every bus, and tag on at every subway gate. Do that, and the free transfer between bus and subway (or bus to bus) applies by itself, as long as you catch the next ride inside the window.

No app. No ticket. Nobody to tell. The discount comes purely from your tap history.

The window is 30 minutes between 7:00 AM and 9:00 PM, and 60 minutes overnight from 9:00 PM to 7:00 AM. You get up to 4 free transfers per fare, so five rides on one base fare plus any distance surcharge.

One exception is worth knowing. Re-boarding the same bus route number doesn’t count as a transfer. The system reads it as a new fare.

Look near each subway door and you’ll see priority seats in pink, yellow or blue. Pink is for pregnant passengers, the others for elderly and disabled riders and general priority use.

They stay empty by custom, even on a packed train. Korean riders leave them alone no matter how crowded the car gets, and it’s worth doing the same as a visitor.

Need to sort out how to pay for a top-up? See our currency exchange guide. Heading to Busan as well? Its card system works differently, and our Busan bus guide covers it.

Seoul Subway & Bus: Quick Answers