Ask the internet what a week in Korea costs and you get numbers between $600 and $3,000, all delivered with total confidence. None of them are lying. They are just answering a different question than the one you asked.
Here is the cleanest way to see the problem. Getting from Incheon Airport into Seoul costs 4,150 won or 53,000 won, and both figures come from the same Seoul city government page.
So this article does something narrower and more useful than a budget estimate. Korea publishes a lot of its prices. Trains, buses, taxis, palace tickets — those are set by government and printed in a table. Everything else is a market price that nobody can quote you honestly. I am going to give you the first category in full, and then be explicit about where the second one begins.
Your first hour: 4,150 to 53,000 won
| Option | Fare | Time |
|---|---|---|
| AREX all-stop train | 4,150 | 59 min from Terminal 1 |
| Airport bus | 5,000 | 60 to 80 min |
| AREX express train | 9,500 | every 20 to 40 min |
| Taxi, nearer destinations | 31,000 to 34,000 | 40 to 50 min |
| Taxi, central Seoul hotels | 47,000 to 58,500 | 80 to 100 min |
The taxi figures are the city's own worked examples for named hotels, and they exclude the 7,900 won expressway toll, which you pay on top.
The all-stop train takes 59 minutes to Seoul Station. The express takes less, but the express costs more than twice as much and runs every 20 to 40 minutes instead of every 5 to 10. If you land at a normal hour with normal luggage, the slow train is usually the better deal, and it is the single biggest saving available on the whole trip.
I compared the airport routes in more detail separately, so I will not repeat the logistics here.
Getting around: the subway is 1,550 won, mostly
The adult base fare on the Seoul subway is 1,550 won with a transit card. Three things change that number, and all three are in the published rules.
| How you pay or ride | Adult fare |
|---|---|
| Transit card | 1,550 |
| Single-ride ticket bought from a machine | 1,650 |
| First ride before 6:30 AM, with a card | 1,240 |
| Beyond 10 km | +100 per 5 km |
So a card is 100 won cheaper than a paper ticket every single ride, an early start knocks 20 percent off, and a long cross-city journey costs a few hundred won more than a short hop. Nothing dramatic. Ten rides is around 16,000 won.
Buses are priced by type, not by distance band. A regular trunk or branch bus is 1,500 won. A neighbourhood local bus is 1,200. The wide-area rapid buses are 3,000 and the late-night owl buses 2,500.
The transfer rule is where people lose money without noticing. You must tap your card again when you get off the bus. If you do not, the system cannot see where your journey ended, and your next boarding is charged as a fresh fare instead of a free transfer. You get up to four transfers within 30 minutes of getting off, or 60 minutes between 9 PM and 7 AM.
Taxis: the meter is different at midnight
A medium sedan taxi starts at 4,800 won for the first 1.6 km in the daytime, then adds 100 won every 131 metres. Below about 15 km/h it charges by time instead, 100 won per 30 seconds, which is why a jam is expensive.
At night the starting meter itself changes: 5,800 won from 10 PM, 6,700 won from 11 PM to 2 AM, back to 5,800 until 4 AM. That is roughly 40 percent more before you have moved. Crossing outside the city limits adds another 20 percent, and doing both at once can reach 60 percent.
Practically: a taxi across central Seoul in the afternoon is a reasonable 8,000 to 12,000 won and often worth it. The same ride after the subway closes is a different purchase, and worth deciding on deliberately rather than by default.
Sights are cheaper than everyone expects
| Site | Adult admission |
|---|---|
| Gyeongbokgung | 3,000 |
| Changdeokgung palace grounds | 3,000 |
| Changgyeonggung / Deoksugung / Jongmyo | 1,000 each |
| Combined ticket, four palaces plus Jongmyo | 6,000 |
The combined ticket is valid six months and covers one visit to each site, so it pays for itself the moment you see three of them. Wearing hanbok gets you in free, and there is a written standard for what counts, which I covered separately.
A worked day, using only published numbers
Two subway rides, one bus, one palace, one combined ticket instead of single entries:
| Item | Won |
|---|---|
| Subway, three rides | 4,650 |
| Bus, one ride | 1,500 |
| Combined palace ticket | 6,000 |
| Everything the government prices | 12,150 |
About nine US dollars, and the palace ticket is a one-off that covers several days. Transport and sightseeing are not what makes Korea expensive or cheap. Food and accommodation decide your budget, and those are exactly the two things no official source will price for you.
Passes, and when they are worth it
A T-money card costs 3,000 to 5,000 won and then you load it. The Climate Card is Seoul's unlimited pass: 3,000 for the physical card plus 5,000 for one day up to 20,000 for seven days. Mpass, foreigner-only, runs 15,000 to 64,500 won for one to seven days and caps you at 20 rides a day.
Do the arithmetic before you buy. At 1,550 won a ride, a 5,000 won day pass breaks even at about four rides. If you are walking a neighbourhood all afternoon, you will not hit four. If you are crossing the city repeatedly, you will. I compared the Climate Card and Mpass properly in another post.
One catch worth knowing before you queue: the Climate Card can only be bought with cash or a Korean-issued card.
What I am not going to make up
Meals, hotels, cafes, shopping, exchange rates and ATM fees are set by businesses, not published by anyone, and vary more than any average would suggest. I could quote a figure and it would be a guess wearing a suit.
What I can tell you is the shape of the problem. The published costs above come to roughly 12,000 won for a full day of moving around and seeing things. Whatever your total ends up being, nearly all of the variance sits in where you sleep and where you eat. That is the honest answer to "is $1,000 enough for two weeks" — the transport and admission portion of that fortnight is under 200,000 won, and the rest is a question about you.
Before you go, it is worth knowing how you will actually pay for all this, because the transit card is the one thing your foreign card still cannot buy. For the airport run I compared the train, bus and taxi options in detail, the pass maths is in Climate Card versus Mpass, and if you plan to spend enough to claim tax back, three limits decide whether you get anything.
Sources
- Seoul Metropolitan Government, Getting to Seoul from Incheon Airport — AREX, airport bus and taxi fares with worked hotel examples
- Seoul Metropolitan Government, Modes of Transport: Subway — fares effective 28 June 2025
- Seoul Metropolitan Government, Modes of Transport: Bus — fares effective 12 August 2023, transfer rules
- Seoul Metropolitan Government, Modes of Transport: Taxi — fares effective 1 February 2023
- Korea Heritage Service, Royal Palaces and Tombs Center, Admission Fees
- Korea Tourism Organization, Transportation Cards
All checked on 12 August 2026. Fares are revised periodically and the effective dates above are part of the record for that reason — if you are reading this much later, check the current table before budgeting.
