Emergency Escape Routes!

Always Be Prepared!

Incheon Airport to Mokpo Bus

If, after you're done escaping Mokpo, you actually want to get back here, the easiest way is to grab the same Korean Komfort Mokpo to Incheon Airport bus, except in the other direction. It's the same deal at ₩33,600 (plus ₩2,000 booking fee) per seat, except that now your two choices Mokpo choices leave Incheon Aiport at:

• 8:40 am
• 6:20 pm

And again, if you miss the Mokpo bus you can always catch the more frequent bus to Gwangju.

I thought that Kumho, the people responsible for the buses leaving Mokpo, would also be responsible for the buses leaving the airport. But there's no airport option on their website. Instead there's Airportbus where tickets can be bought in a pimp-like fashion that explains the extra ₩2,000 service charge.

The Airportbus site is only in Korean and the routes and fees table seems to only care about major routes, i.e. Mokpo is missing but the information for Gwangju (광주) is accurate. The color coded words at the top of the table (일반, 우등 and 심야 ) translate into general, superior, and late night services, and demand different prices. There is a schedule posted at the airport, photographed and included here for your planning pleasure:



Update: There is an English Schedule maintained by the Airport itself. It's simple to use and presents Mokpo is a nice little table & map combination.

Escape Mokpo by Plane

Usually escaping from Mokpo by plane involves an escape by bus to Incheon Airport. But Mokpo is large enough to warrant its own airport, aptly named Mokpo Airport (목포 공항 aka Mokpo Kong Hang). For the curious, Korea is small enough that airports are easily recognised by their name or host city so most Koreans (including taxi drivers) don't bother with 국제 (aka Guk Chay) and 국내 (aka Guk Neah), the respective international and domestic prefixes for 공항 (aka Kong Hang), the Korean word for airport. Mokpo's airport is a domestic one but unfortunately closed to the public.

From the official website we have this history:

Mokpo airport is located 22km far from Mokpo City Hall to the southeast. It was constructed in 1969 and opened Mokpo~Seoul line by korean Air on July 1992 and Asiana Airlines on December 1992. Korean Air placed Mokpo~Jeju line into service in 1993, and Mokpo~Busan line on October 1994. But it was stopped on October 15, 2001. Since April 2003, there has been only 2 flights in Mokpo~Seoul line of Asiana Airlines. Mokpo Airport has been operated in affection of local residents for the time being, but it would be faded away to history when Muan International Airport, which is being constructed as alternative airport considering of the increasing demands, starts the operation.

Yes, the closest way to escape by plane is now through Muan Airport (무안공항 aka Muan Kong Hang) that just opened November 8th of 2007. The airport itself is scheduled to be the 3rd largest in Korea once it starts to operate at full capacity:

The airport was apparently under construction for 8 years, and as I mentioned in an earlier post there are articles that say the airport was supposed to open as early as 2004 (I saw one that said 2003, but I can't find it now). So the current delays are face-slappingly mind-boggling. According to a Korea Times article from November 2, the highway between Gwangju and Muan isn't scheduled to open until June, 2008, and that the KTX may eventually pass through Muan. I don't understand why the transportation issue wasn't the first hammered out, instead of being among the last. All of the issues mentioned in the initial KT article I linked are pretty serious deficiencies, and I guess by "open" it is meant that airplanes are physically able to take off and land.

Brian may sound a bit harsh, but Muan is on par with South Korea's reputation for mismanaged airport projects:

The "zany airport" in the report is Uljin Airport in North Gyeongsang Province, which has not yet opened. Uljin Airport was originally scheduled to open in 2003 but operations have been delayed since no airlines want to fly there, as AFP correctly reported. The airlines know that very few passengers would want to fly there.

Uljin Airport isn't the only local airport in Korea that can't attract airlines. Daegu Airport has had no flights since November when airlines decided not to fly there. Yangyang Airport in Gangwon Province handled an average of just 66 passengers per day in July, the peak summer vacation season. That's fewer than the number of people employed to run the place -- 82. Muan International Airport in South Jeolla Province, which opened in November, averages just one domestic and one international flight per day.

As for the Mokpo airport some Mokponians around here are telling me that it has already faded away to history and that it is (or will be, depending on the eventuality of Muan) a private airport used by the military.

Train Stations of Korea

Flickr's jsj6169 has started collecting photos of various trains stations around Korea, including a slightly outdated snapshot of Mokpo's own yeok. Interestingly enough enough the photos gives the day of May 15, 1913. I'm guessing that's the initial founding date and not the date of the photograph.

Interestingly enough jsj6169 also gives the name and street address of the station in Hangul; this could be useful when using Naver's local or map sites.

Escape Mokpo By Train

Like escaping by bus and by boat, Mokpo has one way to escape by train, The Mokpo Train Station (목포역 aka Mokpo Yeok). But it's usually referred to as Mokpo KTX thanks to the Korea National Railroad (Korail) popular bullet train service.

There are other train classes apart from KTX that offer a slower trip at a cheaper price. There's the Saemaul-ho (새마을호) trains, the Mugunghwa-ho (무궁화호) trains and finally the Commuter (통근열차) trains. But most foreigners in Mokpo prefer KTX since KTX's Honam line, connects Mokpo to Seoul's Yongsan station in just under 3 hour.

Figuring out the timetable is somewhat tricky. The online schedule is only available in Korean and the English part of the site tries to push the Tourist Korail Pass instead of providing a translated schedule. Since Seoul is involved, there is more English information (blogs included) but in the end, the best bet is to purchase the tickets at the station.

A KTX ticket is priced by distance and class. The popular economy, one-way seat, from Mokpo to Seoul, will cost 45,000₩. However for groups of four, a cheaper option is to snag the table, the part of the train car where the forward and backward facing seats meet. There, two pairs of seats face each other across a folding table in middle of the car and the quad only costs 108,000₩. This works out to 27,000₩ per seat, slashing 40% of the normal seat price in exchange for bumping legs.

Escape Mokpo by Boat

The Mokpo Ferry Terminal (목포여객터미널 aka Mokpo Yeogaek Terminal) is the only exit point for escaping Mokpo by boat.

The terminal itself is a multi-building complex and the important buildings to remember are the domestic terminal (previously used for Oedaldo and other local adventures) and the international terminal. All taxis usually recognize a foreigner asking "Yo-gek-sun" as a request for the domestic terminal; you can specify the international terminal by saying 목포국제여객터미널 (aka Mokpo Gukjae Yeogaek Terminal).

The domestic terminal connects Mokpo to a range of Korean islands; practically all of the tourist sites suggest that you depart via Mokpo for the southern islands.Tour2Korea has a nice summary of these destinations, although it tends to focus on the more popular destinaton, like Jejudo & Hongdo, and ignore Mokpo's local islands. The most complete information, in Korean is listed on the terminal's official page, organised by the companies that operate the routes.

Mokpo is also one of South Korea's international terminals, connecting (it seems) to Shanghai via the Korea-China Bridge.

Mokpo to Incheon Airport Bus

Escaping Mokpo by bus often leads to escaping Korea by plane and thanks to the Mokpo to Inchean Airport express bus, it's super easy and confortable.

The bus itself is amazing and is a perfect symbol of Korean Komfort, the Korean desire for comfortable living in all aspects of life. It is a full length passenger bus outfitted with plenty of leg room thanks to the igneous idea to only use 3 seats per row. The seats themselves are comparable to those in first class air travel; all seats are fully reclinable, equipped with foot rest and plenty of space to curl up and fall back asleep.

There are actually two Mokpo to Inchean buses, both operated by Kumho and sheduled on the Express Bus Lines Association's Kobus site:

• The 2:30 am bus.
  
• The 9:00 am bus.
  

As scary as it sounds, the 2:30 am option is extremely popular with both the locals and the foreigners since, all things considered, this is the main artery to Seoul's International Airport and all of its day flights. Purchase tickets well in advance, either by navigating through the Korean part of the Kobus site and using a Korean credit card or by visiting the ticket counter at the Mokpo Bus Station.

If you do find yourself out of luck, your closest option is to catch a cross-country bus to Gwangju and take one of the many airport bus running out of that station, discoverable via the same Kobus trip planner.

Escape Mokpo by Bus

Even though it has many names the Mokpo Bus Terminal is the only bus station in Mokpo that you can use for your escape. Sometimes it goes by Distance Terminal, Express Terminal, or Cross-Country Terminal, but everybody (taxis included) recognize it as the Bus Terminal. Here's the contact information:

전라남도 목포시 상동 220
(Jeollanamdo, Mokpo, Sang-dong 220)
☏ Tel : 061-276-0220 or ☏ Tel : 061-276-0221

As usual, trying to find English information about the bus schedule is frustrating, leaving us no option but to try and interpret what exists in Korean. Right away we have two starting points: EasyTicket and The Kumho Asiana Group.

With no surprises EasyTicket turns out to be a ticketing agent for Kumho's bus division and Kumho's bus division (also known as Kumho Express) turns out to be the bus company that seems to run all the buses out of Mokpo. But it's not quite that simple. Kumho operates the www.kumhoexpress.co.kr (in English) website, but Kumho is also listed on the Express Bus Lines Association's www.kobus.co.kr (in English) as well; this page on KumhoExpress lists EasyTicket and Kobus as handling the tickets for different routes. So what site you use depends on where you're going. Now, within this Kumho bus monopoly in Mokpo there are two kinds of buses useful for escape: direct and express buses. The main difference here is based on how far you're going; Mokponians use a direct bus to escape to the neighboring towns and an express bus to escape to the neighboring Seoul. So, in the end, it seems that direct bus users can use KumhoExpress while express bus users should use Kobus. But either way you'll need a Korean credit card to make the purchase and that's something that most foreigners don't have (i.e. cannot legally obtain) leaving the only option of a cash purchase at the ticket counter.

That doesn't mean that the sites themselves aren't useful. The English version of KumhoExpress does provide a timetable but it is outdated and hasn't been touched since 2003; the more recent Korean version does provide a direct bus trip planner that lists the options for short trips like the popular Mokpo to Gwanju route:

• Express - Transgooglelated
• Night Express -Transgooglelated
  
• Commuter - Transgooglelated
  

On the other hand, the English and Korean versions of Kobus are more polished and relatively in synch with one another, giving us the wonderful English trip planner.