Your card is fine. The T-money you bought in Seoul taps you onto the Busan subway, the Jeju buses, the Daegu metro and the town buses in between, and you top it up the same way everywhere, with cash at any convenience store.
What stops working is the rulebook. T-money’s own guide says it plainly: fares and transfer systems differ by region, ask each local government. Every city sets its own price for a ride, its own transfer window and its own idea of what a zone is. The card is like a phone that roams. It connects everywhere, and every network charges its own rate.
The card carries, the rules do not
Busan
The subway has lines 1 to 4, plus the Donghae line along the east coast and the light rail to Gimhae airport, and one card covers all of them.
Fares come in two zones. A card ride is 1,600 won in the near zone and 1,800 won in the far one, and a single ticket costs 100 won more. Buses are 1,550 won on a card, or 2,100 won on the seat and express buses, and 2,000 won after dark on the late buses.
Busan was the first city in the country to make children aged 6 to 12 ride free on a card, on both the subway and the buses.
The transfer rule is 30 minutes from tapping off, two transfers, and the discount goes to one person per card. A bus to subway transfer costs a small top-up rather than nothing, and the Donghae line does not transfer onto the Gimhae and Yangsan buses at all.
A one-day subway pass is 6,000 won through the operator’s own app. It covers the subway only, not buses.
Taxis start at 4,800 won, the same as Seoul, and have since June 2023. Between 23:00 and 04:00 the meter adds 20 to 30 percent, with the 30 percent band from midnight to 02:00. Kakao T works here exactly as it does in Seoul.
For what to do once you are on the train, Busan from Seoul has the two-day shape.
Jeju
No subway, one bus network, and a numbering system that tells you everything if you know how to read it.
The first digit of the route number is the type. 1xx is a rapid bus, which runs from the airport and the main terminal to the far coast with few stops. 2xx is a trunk bus round the island on the same roads, stopping everywhere. 3xx and 5xx are the city trunk routes for Jeju City and Seogwipo. 4xx, 6xx and 7xx are the local feeders, and 810 and 820 are the tourist loops.
A trunk or feeder bus is 1,150 won on a card, 1,200 in cash. A rapid bus is 2,000 won for the first 20 km and 500 won for every 5 km after that, up to 4,000 won.
That last number is the trap. If you do not tap off a rapid bus, you are charged the 4,000 won maximum, whatever the distance. The reader by the door on the way out is not optional here.
Transfers are free for 40 minutes after tapping off, twice, and never onto the same route number. One person per card.
From the airport, the 101 and 102 rapid buses leave from gate 5 on the arrivals level. The 600 airport limousine runs to the Jungmun resort hotels and on to Seogwipo, charging by distance from the operator’s table: 4,500 won to the Jungmun hotels and 5,000 won to the end of the line at the Seogwipo KAL Hotel. Tell the driver where you are getting off before you tap.
Taxis start at 4,300 won and have since July 2024. Add 20 percent between 23:00 and 04:00, and 1,000 won if you booked it through an app rather than hailing it. Renting a car needs an International Driving Permit from home, and the Jeju guide explains what the island looks like without one.
Daegu, Daejeon and Gwangju
Three cities with a metro, each with its own tariff, none of them with zones you need to think about much.
Daegu has three lines and a flat 1,500 won card fare, in force since January 2024, with a single ticket at 1,700. Buses are also 1,500 on a card since February 2025. Transfers run 30 minutes and two changes, and the operator is specific that you must tap the reader at the rear door on the way off a bus or the transfer does not count. The transfer area reaches out to Gyeongsan, Gumi and the other surrounding towns and onto the Daegyeong commuter line.
Daejeon has one line, 1,550 won within 10 km of where you started and 1,650 won beyond it.
Gwangju has one line at a flat 1,250 won, unchanged since August 2016 and the cheapest metro fare in the country. A rise to 1,500 won was proposed in March for June 2026, and the operator’s fare page still showed 1,250 in September, so read the gate before you assume.
What does not change
The public transport guide rule about tapping off buses applies everywhere, and on Jeju it carries a 4,000 won penalty. Naver Map and Kakao Map show live bus arrivals in all of these cities, and the Kakao Map guide covers the bus side.
Topping up is cash at a convenience store, in every city, with the limits in the T-money guide. The one other thing to carry is the habit of looking at the last bus time in the app before you commit to an evening out of town. Between cities the KTX and the intercity buses have their own pages.
The statement that fares and transfer systems vary by region is from T-money’s own public transport guidance, read 16 September 2026, as is the list of cities where the card works. Busan subway fares, the one-day pass and the transfer rules including the Donghae line exception are from Busan Transportation Corporation’s English fare pages; Busan bus fares and the children’s free fare from the city’s bus fare page updated 23 September 2024; the Busan transfer window, transfer count and one-person rule from the city’s bus information system; the Busan taxi tariff from the city’s taxi fare table, effective 1 June 2023. Jeju bus fares, the rapid bus distance rule, the 4,000 won maximum for not tagging off and the 40-minute transfer rule are from the Jeju provincial government’s transport FAQ; the 600 limousine fares from the fare table published by the Jeju bus information system; the Jeju taxi tariff from the same system, effective 1 July 2024. Daegu metro fares are from Daegu city’s urban rail page, last revised 22 April 2026, and its bus fares and transfer rules from the city’s bus information system, effective 24 February 2025. Daejeon fares are from Daejeon Transportation Corporation’s fare page and Gwangju’s from Gwangju Transportation Corporation’s, with the proposed Gwangju rise from Korean press of 24 March 2026. All read on 16 September 2026. Taxi base fares for Daegu, Daejeon and Gwangju are not given because their city pages were not checked.
