Crowds queue to reserve tickets to travel during Chuseok. / Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul



By Chyung Eun-ju

Crowds queued at Seoul Station on Tuesday to buy tickets for Chuseok, the Korean Thanksgiving holiday and one of the nation's major vacation seasons.

National railroad operator Korail opened reservations on Tuesday for travelers using the Gyeongbu Line (Seoul-Busan) and Gyeongjeon Line (Jinju-Gwangyang) during the week-long holiday season at the start of October.

Reservations for Honam Line (Seoul-Mokpo) and Jeolla Line (Iksan-Yeosu) will open on Wednesday.

About 130 people spent Monday night inside the station to get a head start in buying tickets. At around 9 a.m. the next morning, when offline booking started, about 300 people on paper boxes and mattresses were in front of ticket windows.





People queue in front of ticket windows inside Seoul Station in Yongsan-gu, central Seoul, Tuesday, to buy train tickets for the Chuseok holiday. / Yonhap



Online reservations that started three hours earlier were not that much more comfortable than offline, because the booking website, letskorail.com, bounced people back to the homepage when they tried to reserve tickets.

"When I accessed the booking page again, it said I was behind 17,000 people," said one of the people who searched for tickets online. "I waited and it dropped back to 60 people.

"But then it bounced me again. I accessed it and found I was now behind 20,000 people. And I lost connection to the site."

Korail had posted a warning on the site that if reservations were not made within three minutes or no action was made for one minute, an automatic logout would occur.

For two days starting Tuesday, the site's reservation service is reserved for people travelling between Sept. 29 and Oct. 9 on KTX, Saemaeul, Mugunghwa, O-train, V-train, S-Train, A-train, DMZ-Train and Westgold-train. Remaining tickets for travel after Wednesday will go on sale the following day.

Korail released 70 percent of tickets for the holiday season online and 30 percent offline. To avoid illegal distribution of the tickets, the company restricted each user to no more than 12 tickets, six tickets per session.