What does ten days in South Korea actually cost?
The cost of a trip to South Korea is the first question on most of the enquiries that reach my desk, and it is the one the internet answers with a shrug. So here is the arithmetic, shown rather than summarised.
Everything below is land only, per person, based on two people sharing a room. It excludes international flights, because those depend entirely on where you are flying from and we quote them separately. It includes accommodation, food, ground transport, entries and the guiding we would normally build in.
The four anchors
These are the four per-day figures our consultants price against. They are the same numbers used in the complete South Korea guide, because the guide and the magazine should not contradict each other.
| Style | What it looks like | Per person, per day |
|---|---|---|
| Careful | Korean business hotels, mostly independent days, KTX in standard class, no guiding | $160 |
| Comfortable | Good three to four star hotels, two or three guided days, reserved seats throughout, one hanok night | $250 |
| Boutique | Design hotels and small properties, private transfers, guiding where it changes the day | $390 |
| Luxury | Top-tier city hotels, private vehicle and guide throughout | $620 |
Multiply by the length of the trip and you have the honest planning range.
| Style | 10 days | 14 days | 21 days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Careful | $1,600 | $2,240 | $3,360 |
| Comfortable | $2,500 | $3,500 | $5,250 |
| Boutique | $3,900 | $5,460 | $8,190 |
| Luxury | $6,200 | $8,680 | $13,020 |
Korea is cheaper than Japan at every tier and the gap is widest at the bottom. It is considerably cheaper than Western Europe for food, transport and entries, and roughly comparable for hotels in central Seoul.
Two structural notes before the detail. The gap between careful and comfortable is almost entirely hotels. The gap between boutique and luxury is almost entirely cars and guides, not rooms.
Accommodation, which is where the budget is decided
Rates are per room per night for two sharing, as planning guidance rather than a quote. Korean hotel pricing moves with the season and with domestic demand, so we confirm the live rate for your dates before anything is booked.
| Type | What you get | Per room, per night |
|---|---|---|
| Korean business hotel | Small, spotless, functional, good bathroom, no view | $60 to $95 |
| Good three star, Seoul | A proper room in a neighbourhood worth walking | $110 to $170 |
| Four star city hotel | Space, a view over the river or the hills, a bar | $190 to $300 |
| Design or boutique hotel | Small, particular, usually why you remember the city | $260 to $450 |
| Luxury Seoul hotel | The international names in Jung-gu and Gangnam | $450 and up |
| Hanok stay, Gyeongju or Jeonju | Timber, a courtyard, a heated floor, sometimes a shared bathroom | $130 to $260 |
| Temple stay | A simple room, two vegetarian meals, a 3am wake-up | $60 to $110 per person |
| Jeju resort, May or October | A sea view and a pool | $170 to $320 |
| Jeju resort, August | The same room, domestic peak | $300 to $550 |
The Jeju line is the one that surprises people. Korean island pricing is set by Korean holidaymakers, not by foreign visitors, so the same room can nearly double between May and the first week of August. Our advice on timing is in South Korea month by month and it saves more money than any hotel decision.
A Korean business hotel is genuinely good: compact, immaculate, warm, quiet, with better plumbing than a European four star. Nobody complains that they are dirty. They complain that the room is the size of the bed.
Food, which is the good news
Korea is one of two countries in our library where we routinely tell people they are budgeting too much for food.
- Market breakfast, kimbap or a soup: $4 to $7
- Bowl of noodles at a neighbourhood shop: $6 to $9
- Gimbap, jjigae or bibimbap lunch: $7 to $12
- Gwangjang or Jagalchi market grazing, a real meal: $10 to $18
- Korean barbecue dinner for two, sharing, with drinks: $40 to $70
- Temple cuisine set lunch: $25 to $45
- Serious Korean fine dining, tasting menu: $120 to $250
- Coffee, which Koreans take seriously: $4 to $6
A realistic daily food budget for someone eating well and eating widely is $40 to $60 per person. You can eat extremely well at $30. Above $100 a day you are eating in rooms that need to be booked weeks ahead, which is a good trip and a deliberate one rather than a default.
Two cost quirks worth knowing. Banchan, the small side dishes, are refilled without charge, so a $9 stew is a full meal. And a great many Korean dishes are cooked for two people minimum, which means solo travellers pay a surcharge in practice by ordering things they do not want.
Transport, which is cheaper than you think
| Leg | Approximate one way, reserved seat |
|---|---|
| Seoul to Busan, KTX, about 200 miles (325 km) | $45 to $55 |
| Seoul to Singyeongju, for Gyeongju | $40 to $48 |
| Gyeongju to Busan | $10 to $14 |
| Seoul to Jeonju | $25 to $32 |
| Express bus, Seoul to Sokcho for Seoraksan | $14 to $20 |
| Seoul or Busan to Jeju, one way flight | $40 to $90 |
| Incheon airport to central Seoul, express train | $8 to $12 |
| Typical Seoul subway ride | $1.10 to $1.60 |
Fares move a little year to year and we price your actual legs at the time of booking rather than asking you to trust a table.
A ten-day route with three long rail legs comes to roughly $110 to $140 per person, plus $30 to $50 in subway, bus and taxi travel. That is the entire transport line for the trip. It is why the KORAIL Pass usually loses the arithmetic: the individual tickets are simply not expensive enough for a pass to beat. We run the sum both ways and expect the answer to be individual tickets with reserved seats.
Taxis are the other pleasant surprise. A cross-town Seoul fare is $6 to $12. The complication is not price, it is that the ride-hailing apps Koreans use generally need a Korean phone number to verify, so you will be hailing on the street or asking a hotel to call, and drivers rarely speak English. Every address in our documents is written in Hangul for exactly this reason.
Guiding, which is the line people misjudge
A licensed English-speaking guide for a full day in Seoul runs roughly $220 to $320 for the party, not per person, and a private vehicle with a driver adds $180 to $280 a day.
Our default is two or three guided days out of ten: one in Seoul that makes sense of the palaces and the twentieth century, one market and food day, and one in Gyeongju. The rest of Korea is straightforward to travel independently, because the subway is bilingual, the KTX is easy and the maps work once you have the right app.
Guiding every day roughly doubles the daily rate and, in a country this navigable, is rarely what we recommend. We will say so before you ask.
Three complete ten-day budgets
Each is ten days, per person, two sharing, land only, on the Seoul, Gyeongju, Busan shape described in South Korea in ten days.
The careful trip, about $1,600
Business hotels throughout, one hanok night in Gyeongju, standard class KTX, no guiding, eating in markets and neighbourhood restaurants.
| Line | Total |
|---|---|
| Accommodation, 9 nights | $580 |
| Food | $450 |
| Rail, subway and local transport | $180 |
| Entries, DMZ day tour, incidentals | $390 |
| Total | $1,600 |
The compromises are all in room size. Nothing you see or eat is affected.
The comfortable trip, about $2,500
Good three to four star hotels in Seoul and Busan, a hanok in Gyeongju, three guided days, reserved seats, and a mix of market eating and booked dinners. This is the most common shape we build and it maps onto classic Korea in 10 days.
| Line | Total |
|---|---|
| Accommodation, 9 nights | $1,180 |
| Food | $560 |
| Rail, transfers and local transport | $250 |
| Guiding, three days | $420 |
| Entries and incidentals | $90 |
| Total | $2,500 |
The boutique trip, about $3,900
Design hotels in Seoul and Busan, a serious hanok in Gyeongju, private transfers between cities where they save a morning, private guiding on four days, and dinners our Seoul partner books by phone. See boutique Korea in 11 days.
| Line | Total |
|---|---|
| Accommodation, 9 nights | $2,150 |
| Food | $780 |
| Private transfers, rail and local transport | $360 |
| Guiding, four days | $520 |
| Entries and incidentals | $90 |
| Total | $3,900 |
What actually moves the number
- Seoul hotel choice. The spread between a very good Korean business hotel and an international five star is larger than any other single decision in the trip.
- The month. October is the peak of the Korean year for domestic and foreign demand alike. Chuseok and the blossom weeks fill trains and small hotels.
- How much guiding you take. Two or three days is our default. Ten days of it doubles the daily figure.
- Whether Jeju is in the trip, and when. August island rates are a different currency.
One thing that barely moves it: the number of cities. Korean rail is cheap enough that adding a stop costs you a day, not a meaningful amount of money. Whether it is worth the day is the subject of what we would skip in South Korea.
Plan this trip
Tell us your dates, your rough budget and the shape of trip you have in mind, and Masha will build a first outline with real hotels and real numbers. Free, and with no obligation.
Keep reading
- South Korea: the complete guide to planning your trip
- South Korea in ten days, and why that is enough
- South Korea month by month
- Seoul in four days, neighbourhood by neighbourhood
- Classic Korea in 10 days
- All our South Korea trips
Frequently asked questions
Is South Korea cheaper than Japan?
Do these figures include international flights?
How much cash should we carry?
Is a KORAIL Pass worth buying?
When do you confirm the real prices?
Plan a trip to South Korea, a small country that repays a careful plan All South Korea, a small country that repays a careful plan trips
