The Korea Railroad Corporation (Korail) is reportedly reviewing a proposal to increase weekday train cancellation fees to the level of those charged on weekends. This information was revealed in a document submitted to the National Assembly's Land Infrastructure and Transport Committee, where Korail highlighted that such an increase is aimed at enhancing convenience for citizens. Currently, the cancellation fee for weekday tickets (Monday to Thursday) is capped at 5% of the fare, while weekend and holiday fares can incur fees up to 20% as per a regulation revised in May of last year. For example, cancelling a KTX ticket from Seoul to Busan just before departure incurs a fee of around 3,000 KRW on weekdays but rises to approximately 12,000 KRW over the weekend.

Korail's reasoning behind this proposed increase is to prevent 'no-shows,' or the situation where tickets are not used and cannot be resold. The acting president of Korail, Jeong Jeong-rae, noted that after raising cancellation fees on weekends last year, the incidence of no-shows decreased by 0.7 percentage points. This reduction allowed for around 30 seats of the 955 available on a KTX train to be resold, yielding an additional revenue of about 50 billion KRW from cancellation fees in the previous year.

However, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, responsible for overseeing Korail, is advocating for a more cautious approach. Despite the revenue concerns, there has been significant public pushback against increasing such fees again so soon after a previous adjustment. An official from the ministry stated that last year’s modifications were already made to address low fees and that the reduction in no-shows alongside the increase in refund proportions necessitates more time to observe market trends before moving forward with any proposed hikes in cancellation fees.