The KORAIL Pass, also known as the Korea Rail Pass or KR Pass, is a series of rail passes offered by Korail for foreign visitors for long-distance trains including the KTX, ITX, Mugunghwa and Nuriro trains. If you treat Seoul as a base and travel out to further cities for day trips, the KORAIL Pass could be cheaper than getting separate regular tickets. For this trip, I was planning to go to Busan with the KTX and Dorasan with the DMZ Train, so the 2 Day Select Pass (Flexible 2 Day Pass) was cheaper than booking the individual tickets separately. Plus if I was booking it in SGD on KLOOK, the price was even lower.
Click here to buy your discounted KORAIL Pass (Korea Rail Pass / KR PASS) for 2/3/4/5Days!
The KLOOK voucher this time is an actual document by KORAIL which requires to be printed out to “exchange” for the KORAIL Pass.
The instructions directed to go to a ticket counter to redeem the printout for the KORAIL Pass.
Seeing that there was some queues at the ticket counters on the main concourse level, I headed upstairs to stumble upon an empty ticket counter, and made my KORAIL Pass exchange there.
It turns out that there’s no pass that needs to be exchanged and that the printout acts as the actual pass already. However, the pass printout is still needed to make reservations. It is possible to do this on KORAIL’s website but it was as clunky as KTM’s and I failed to make mine before I arrived in South Korea.
But nevertheless, I was still able to make my seat reservations on the spot and one day early for my trips to Busan and Dorasan respectively.
My redeemed KORAIL ticket from Seoul to Busan on the KTX with my Flexible 2 Days KORAIL Pass.
My redeemed KORAIL ticket from Busan to Seoul on the KTX with my Flexible 2 Days KORAIL Pass.
My redeemed KORAIL ticket from Seoul to Dorasan on the DMZ Train with my Flexible 2 Days KORAIL Pass.
Some special terms and conditions in Korean on using the DMZ Train. Sounds fun already.
My redeemed KORAIL ticket from Dorasan to Seoul on the DMZ Train with my Flexible 2 Days KORAIL Pass.
Here’s the price breakdown and comparison on why I decided to buy the Flexible 2 Days KORAIL Pass:
KTX from Seoul to Busan: KRW 59,800
KTX from Busan to Seoul: KRW 59,800DMZ Train from Seoul to Dorasan: KRW 9,200
DMZ Train from Dorasan to Seoul: KRW 9,200Total for Individual Tickets: KRW 138,000
Flexible 2 Days KORAIL Pass: KRW 121,000
Consecutive 3 Days KORAIL Pass: KRW 138,000
Just with the Korean Won price alone, I save KRW 17,000 (~S$19.81). The actual price I paid on KLOOK for the Flexible 2 Days KORAIL Pass was S$134.15, whereas if I had bought the Flexible 2 Days KORAIL Pass at the regular direct price, it would have costed KRW 121,000 (~S$141.01) – and that price is just an estimate before any overseas charges on my credit card.
That means on top of the savings in using the pass, I save an additional ~S$6.86 on top of the existing ~S$19.81 savings by booking the Flexible 2 Days KORAIL Pass off KLOOK.
Hence, it was quite an easy decision for me to buy the Flexible 2 Days KORAIL Pass off KLOOK for my two days of train trips.