Korean Won Converter: What Your Money Is Actually Worth Here

Every visitor asks the same question at some point: is this actually cheap, or does it just look cheap because the numbers are big? A 15,000 won bowl of soup sounds intimidating until you realize it’s about ten dollars. Won amounts are inflated by nature, there’s no won coin smaller than 10, so everything looks like it costs more than it does.

Below is a quick converter for the currencies most visitors actually use, pulling live rates each time you load the page, plus a few numbers worth knowing before you land.

A few numbers to keep in mind

A basic meal at a local spot runs about 8,000 to 12,000 won. A coffee is usually 4,500 to 6,000. A subway ride starts around 1,400. None of it sounds cheap in won until you run it through the converter above.

Cards are accepted almost everywhere now, even at small stalls, so you don’t need to carry huge amounts of cash. Still, keep some on hand, some older shops and street vendors are cash-only.

Airport currency exchange counters tend to offer worse rates than exchanges in the city, particularly around Myeongdong. If you can wait until you’re downtown, you’ll get more for your money.

The rate above is not the rate you’ll get

The converter uses the live mid-market rate — the number banks quote each other. Nobody hands that rate to a traveller. Every way of turning your money into won takes a cut somewhere, and the cuts differ enough to be worth five minutes of your attention.

Use the number above as the honest baseline, then read the rest of this page to see how far each method lands from it.

The one mistake that costs the most

When you pay by card in Korea, the terminal may ask whether you want to be charged in won or in your home currency. Choose won. Always.

Being charged in your own currency is called dynamic currency conversion. It looks like a courtesy — you get to see a familiar number — and it is actually the payment processor doing the conversion at a rate they choose, with a margin built in. Your own bank would almost certainly have done it cheaper.

The same choice appears at ATMs, phrased as “with conversion” or “without conversion”. Decline the conversion. Take the won amount.

This one habit typically saves more than any amount of shopping around for exchange booths.

How much cash do you actually need?

Less than you think. Korea is close to cashless. Cards work at convenience stores for a ₩1,500 coffee, at chain restaurants, at every major shop, and in taxis. Foreign cards are accepted much more widely than they were a few years ago.

Cash still matters in a few specific places:

• Traditional markets — some stalls take cards, plenty would rather not.
• Older small restaurants, especially outside the big cities.
• Topping up a transit card at a station machine — many only take cash.
• Street food, though this is changing fast.

A modest amount of cash for the first day, and an ATM when you need more, beats carrying a week’s spending around.

Where to change money, worst to best

Airport exchange counters

The most convenient and the most expensive. Change a small amount here if you want the reassurance of arriving with won in your pocket, and don’t change your whole budget.

Banks

Better rates than the airport, but limited hours — most branches close mid-afternoon on weekdays and don’t open at weekends. Bring your passport.

Licensed exchange shops in the city

The small counters around Myeongdong and Itaewon post their rates on a board and generally beat the banks, sometimes by a visible margin. They’re licensed and ordinary, not a back-alley thing. Compare two or three boards on the same street before committing — the rates genuinely differ.

ATM withdrawal on a foreign card

Often the best all-in rate, if your home bank doesn’t charge punishing foreign withdrawal fees. The catch is that not every Korean ATM accepts foreign cards — which ones do, and what they charge, is its own article.

Getting a feel for won

The hardest part of a new currency isn’t the arithmetic, it’s knowing whether a number is cheap. Korean prices have a lot of zeros and it takes a few days before ₩12,000 stops feeling like either nothing or a fortune.

The fastest way to build that instinct is to anchor on a few things you’ll buy repeatedly rather than converting every price. A subway ride, a convenience store coffee, a bowl of noodles, a cafe latte — once those four have a shape in your head, everything else sorts itself against them.

We’ve written up the real numbers for several of those: what coffee costs, what a convenience store meal costs, and what an hour of Korean minimum wage buys, which is the most useful anchor of all.

Notes and coins

Notes come in ₩1,000, ₩5,000, ₩10,000 and ₩50,000. Coins in ₩10, ₩50, ₩100 and ₩500. The ₩50,000 note is the big one and some small vendors will sigh at it early in the morning before they have change.

Coins accumulate fast and are nearly useless except for transit top-ups and vending machines. Most convenience stores will let you dump them at the counter.

Before you fly home

If you bought anything substantial, some of the tax comes back — the refund process is simpler than it sounds but has a step people miss. And leftover won is worth spending rather than changing back, since you pay the spread twice.

Read next

• Trip budget calculator — put the rate to work on a whole trip.
• Sale price calculator — for working out what “30% off” actually comes to.
• T-money card — the one thing you’ll want cash for on day one.