Today the Ministry for Land, Infrastructure and Transport announced that non-stop trains between Seoul and Busan would be making a comeback in June or July this year.

The new services would reduce travel time between the two cities to 1 hour 50 minutes, more than 25 minutes faster than current KTX services which stop at Daejeon and Daegu. As for ticket prices, the possibility of higher fares for fewer stops is also being considered.

You may remember that Korail previously operated direct services between the cities from 2010 to 2015, but were scrapped after they were deemed unprofitable. However, with the introduction of the SRT the number of high-speed trains increased by 40%. This has allowed more flexibility with timetables, and the number of services stopping at less than three stations has already risen from 11% to 23%.

MOLIT says it will need to run simulations to assess how many of the non-stop trains it can run per day, but that it would like to operate as many as possible – including SRT services. SRT operator Supreme Railways (SR) currently has the fastest service from Seoul(Suseo) to Busan at 2 hours 9 minutes.

Sources: Busan Ilbo | MOLIT