Seoul subway tips: toilets, snacks, underground malls and escalators

A Seoul subway station is more than a platform and a gate. The city's English guide to the subway describes stations as commercial spaces with all sorts of shops and shelters where citizens can relax, and adds that every station in Seoul has a public restroom. Most of that never appears on a line map, so this is a short tour of what lies under the streets.

The toilet question

Public restrooms in Seoul are mostly free of charge, according to Visit Seoul, and the ones in subway stations are no exception. The open question is which side of the fare gate they are on. A city figure reported by the Korea JoongAng Daily in 2023 said 82 percent of stations have their restrooms outside the platforms, so at most stations you walk out through the gate to use one.

The city has made that less painful. From July 1, 2023 a rider who left through a gate for a restroom break could come back through the same gate within 10 minutes without paying again, and from October 7, 2023 the window grew to 15 minutes. Rules like this get adjusted, so check the current limit at the station. The official Seoul Subway app also shows where the restrooms are.

What the sweet smell is

In winter, a warm sweet smell near the gates often comes from deli manjoo, a small cake filled with custard cream. KOCIS, the government's culture and information service, lists it among the snacks at train stations: stands and convenience stores at stations across the country sell it, Seoul Station included, and people eat the cakes hot on the platform in the cold.

A bag of them is easy to finish between two stops. Walnut cakes are the older station snack. KOCIS ties the walnut cake to Cheonan Station, where sales staff sold packaged walnut cakes to passengers while trains were stopped in the 1960s and 1970s, and it calls the walnut cake the nation's leading snack on the road.

Outside the gates the winter menu grows. One Seoul food guide, updated in July 2026, says roasted sweet potatoes and chestnuts are sold from carts near subway exits and that most subway stations have several vendors selling the classic snacks. Which stall stands where changes from year to year, so the honest advice is to look around before you tap in.

A shopping street under the road

Seoul has whole shopping streets under its roads, and the one most visitors notice is at Express Bus Terminal, where Line 3, Line 7 and Line 9 meet. VisitKorea says Goto Mall has over 600 shops along two long parallel corridors, selling clothes, fashion accessories, interior goods and flowers, and that it is open from 10:00 to 22:00 except on Seollal and Chuseok. Visit Seoul calls it the largest underground shopping center in Gangnam and gives the distance from the station as 137 metres from exit 8-1.

The flowers have a market of their own. Visit Seoul places the Express Bus Terminal Flower Market on the third floor of the terminal, on the Gyeongbu Line side, and lists the natural flower market as open from 23:30 to 12:00 and closed on Sundays. Imported flowers arrive soon after midnight on Wednesdays, it is busiest after 2 a.m., and prices tend to drop toward closing time. A shop that opens at 11:30 at night is not aimed at the morning commute, so check the hours before you plan a bouquet.

Gangnam Station has an arcade of its own. A 2011 Korea JoongAng Daily report counted about 210 shops in the underground commercial area, a number that is old now but gives the scale.

Why the cars are so quiet

The rules about noise are short. A Seoul travel guide updated in June 2026 sums them up as keep your voice low, no speakerphone calls and no videos with the sound on. Visit Seoul adds that you should avoid food with a strong smell on public transport and let people get off before you board, one by one. Put those together and you get a train that is full and quiet at the same time, which is a fair test for a warm bag of deli manjoo.

Stand right, hurry left

On the escalators, the long-standing habit is two lanes: stand on the right and leave the left open for people in a hurry. The government and civic groups began promoting it in 1998 and it spread around the 2002 World Cup, according to the Korea Herald. It has been argued over almost as long. The government urged people to stand on both sides in 2007 and dropped that campaign in 2015, and officials have not said which side to use since.

The argument is live in 2026. The Korea Herald reported in April that the Interior Ministry was preparing a campaign for standing on both sides, and a government survey of 1,000 adults in seven cities found 50.1 percent preferring one side and 49.9 percent preferring two lines, The Star reported on August 31. A small test at Guri Station, near Seoul, found about 190 people used an escalator when both sides were occupied, against 164 when one side stood still, though the researchers said it was too limited to prove anything. The current official advice is to hold the handrail, not walk or run, and stay within the safety lines. So the lane on the left exists, it is used, and the safety agencies would rather it were not.

None of this is on the line map, but all of it is on the ride. Express Bus Terminal is a stop on Line 3 in the game, 고속터미널 in Hangul, 12 keystrokes, and the terminal with the flower market is the one the station is named for.