Busan Travel Tips: 8 Costs to Know Before You Go

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8 things worth knowing before you land in Busan

Most of what trips visitors up in Busan is practical rather than cultural, currency confusion, transit cards, and the odd unfamiliar norm. These 8 cover the ones with real money attached.

  1. Currency is the South Korean won (KRW), not yen or dollars. Prices running into the thousands are normal; roughly 1,350-1,400 KRW to the US dollar (verify current rate). Don’t let the size of the numbers cause a conversion mistake.
  2. Buy a T-money or Cashbee card on day one, about 3,000-5,000 KRW. Sold at any convenience store, metro station, or kiosk, it taps for the metro, buses, most taxis, and convenience-store purchases nationwide, exactly as it works in Seoul.
  3. A single metro ride runs roughly 1,300-1,650 KRW depending on distance (verify current fare). Busan is hilly and spread out, so the metro isn’t optional the way it might be in a more compact city.
  4. The KTX from Seoul takes about 2 hours 8 minutes on the fastest services, historically 45,000-60,000 KRW one way (verify current 2026 pricing). Book ahead for Friday afternoons and holiday weekends, when seats sell out.
  5. Tipping is not customary anywhere in South Korea. Not at restaurants, not in taxis, not at hotels. Leaving one isn’t expected and can confuse staff rather than please them.
  6. Cards work almost everywhere, but markets lean cash-friendly. Carry some won regardless, and use an ATM explicitly marked “Global” or for foreign cards, since ordinary domestic ATMs often reject them.
  7. Dress and behave respectfully at active temples like Beomeosa and Haedong Yonggungsa. Both are functioning places of worship, not museum pieces; shoes come off at some halls, and quiet, modest behavior is expected.
  8. Busan is nowhere near the North Korea/DMZ tensions that make Seoul headlines. It sits at the far southeastern tip of the peninsula, about as far from the DMZ as it’s possible to get within South Korea, and daily life and tourism here run entirely normally.

The one habit worth building early

Tap your T-money card the moment you board a bus or subway car, not after. It becomes automatic within a day, and it’s the single habit that makes getting around Busan cheap rather than a string of small, annoying cash transactions. For a full neighborhood-by-neighborhood cost breakdown, see the best places to stay guide .