Korail Sells Tickets After the KTX Is Full — Epoche B1
When every seat on a KTX is sold, Korail keeps selling. What you get is a standing ticket: no seat number, a lower fare, and the right to be on the train. I found this out at Seoul Station on a Friday evening. Busan, three hours away, and every seat gone until the late train. The machine still offered me something, and the price was lower than the one I had expected to pay. The logic is simple once you see it. A full train is full of seats, not full of space. A standing ticket lets you travel in the vestibule between carriages, where people lean against the wall with their bags, and it also lets you sit in any seat that happens to be empty until the passenger who booked it gets on. Seats empty and refill at every stop, so a standing ticket is rarely three hours of standing. It is a few stretches of standing between other people's stations. The cost is the honest part. The discount is not large, and what it buys you is the removal of a promise. On the worst evening you stand the whole way with a suitcase between your feet, and there is nothing to complain to anyone about, because nothing was promised. Compared with waiting two hours for a confirmed seat, that is usually a bargain — unless you are carrying a lot, or are not well. Sold out, it turns out, is a statement about seats. The train is a different question, and Korail keeps that question open. References Korea Railroad Corporation (Korail) (2024). Terms and Conditions of Passenger Transport [Yeogaek unsong yakgwan]. Korail.