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Korail website crashes as reservations open for Chuseok holiday train tickets

Published: 17 Sep. 2025, 08:50 Updated: 17 Sep. 2025, 11:23

LIM JEONG-WON
[email protected]

An electric display board showing train arrival and departure times are seen at Daejeon Station in Daejeon on July 17. [YONHAP]

The Korea Railroad Corporation (Korail) website crashed Wednesday morning as tickets for trains during the upcoming Chuseok holidays opened, leaving many users in the dark.

Korail’s train ticket reservation system crashed at 7 a.m. Wednesday morning immediately after the regular reservation round opened on Wednesday at 7 a.m. on the website. Reservations for disabled persons and veterans opened earlier on Monday.

After the website crash, reservation tabs on the Korail website only showed a screen with a full moon with a notice reading “Redirecting to the holiday reservation page” as of 8 a.m.

The National Police Agency announced on Sept. 4 that it will launch an intensive crackdown on the use of programs utilizing macros to purchase and resell train tickets in bulk during the Chuseok holiday. Macros are programs that automatically process simple, repetitive tasks.

However, it is unclear whether Wednesday’s Korail homepage crash was due to the use of macros. Users whose screens had got past the homepage notification saw all seats on their desired trains in green while the page was frozen, indicating that no payment processes had gone through for tickets.

“On the eve of the country’s biggest holiday, we can’t even get train tickets to go home and visit family — this is completely ridiculous,” wrote one frustrated user on an online community.

“I’ll have to change all of my holiday plans if I can’t get the right ticket,” read another comment.

A frozen screen on the Korea Railroad Corporation (Korail) train reservation website [YONHAP]

This year's three-day Chuseok holiday will take place from Oct. 5 to 8. With Oct. 4 being National Foundation Day and Oct. 9 falling on Hangul Day, the holidays are set to be more than a week long.

"We believe the system failure occurred due to a surge in ticket sales during the long holiday, which was approximately twice as long as usual," a Korail official said. "We are currently investigating the exact cause."

"We have initiated emergency measures and are gradually normalizing our systems," Korail said in a statement. "We deeply apologize to the public for the inconvenience caused by the connection delays, and we will inspect and improve our systems to prevent similar issues from recurring."

Korail also announced that the Chuseok train reservation hours, which were initially set from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m., will be extended to 4 p.m. on Wednesday. Reservations made on Thursday must be completed by 1 p.m., per the initial time slot.

Colloquially dubbed the “Great Nation Move Holiday” in Korean, the Chuseok holidays typically see a large portion of Korea’s population traveling across the country to see family. In 2024, approximately 36.95 million people traveled from one city or region to another, according to the Korea Expressway Corporation and the Korea Transport Institute.

BY LIM JEONG-WON [[email protected]]