Chuseok travel in Korea: trains, crowds, and what still works

What Chuseok is (short version)

Chuseok (추석) is Korea’s mid-autumn harvest holiday — often called Korean Thanksgiving. Families gather for ancestral rites (charye), share foods like songpyeon, and visit graves. For visitors it feels festive and a little quieter in big-city neighborhoods… while stations, highways, and some tourist spots get crowded.

You do not need a deep cultural lecture to travel well. Treat it as a long public-holiday window with hometown travel spikes, then plan around trains and opening hours.

2026 holiday window