Chuseok 2026 Seoul: Currency Exchange Closes — Get Won by Sept 23
Chuseok 2026 runs Thursday, September 24 through Saturday, September 26, according to the official Visit Korea site. This year there's no substitute Monday tacked on, since none of the three dates falls on a Sunday. The 27th is already a Sunday, so the real dead zone for a visitor is four days, Thursday to Sunday. If your trip lands anywhere in that window, the closures that matter aren't the ones you'd expect.
Everyone plans around "will the palace be open." Almost nobody plans around "will a bank actually give me cash," and that's the one that catches people out.
The Banks Go Dark, Not Just the Small Shops
Visit Korea's own currency page lists the three banks running exchange counters inside Incheon Airport: KB Kookmin (B1, both terminals), Hana (T1 2F, T2 B1), and Woori (1F, both terminals). All three carry the same line: standard hours 09:00–16:00, closed weekends and public holidays. Chuseok is a public holiday. Run that forward and the ordinary branch-level counters at the airport are shut Thursday through Sunday, the exact stretch when Incheon Airport's own passenger crowding peaks on September 24 and 26.
It's not a clean "everything's closed" story, though, and that's what makes it worth checking twice rather than assuming either way. KB Kookmin's own guide to its airport counters separately notes that at least one Terminal 1 departure-level location runs a full 24-hour schedule, distinct from the 09:00–16:00, weekday-only branches listed elsewhere. Both of those facts come from KB's own materials; they're just describing different counters, not contradicting each other, and the airport doesn't make it obvious from the outside which one you're standing in front of. Don't assume 24-hour just because you found a KB sign; look for a posted schedule at that specific counter.
Private money-changers on the Myeongdong exchange strip are the wildcard. Some of them stay open specifically because they know tourists need cash during the holiday, but hours get unpredictable rather than posted and reliable. You may walk past three closed shutters before finding one open. ATMs and card payments keep working everywhere throughout the holiday; it's over-the-counter won exchange specifically that thins out.
Get It Before You Need It
Here's the actual plan: if you're landing on or after September 24, exchange whatever won you'll need for the first two or three days before you fly, either at your home airport or through your bank in advance. Wednesday, September 23 is the last day the standard bank-branch counters keep normal hours. After that you're relying on the 24-hour exception counters and Myeongdong's unpredictable holdouts, not the reliable option.
Won you get on the 23rd is worth more to you than won you're hoping to find on the 25th.
None of this touches T-money. Transit cards top up fine at subway station machines and convenience stores through the whole holiday, so getting around Seoul isn't the problem. Spending cash at a place that doesn't take cards is.
What Stays Open
The four grand palaces — Gyeongbokgung, Changdeokgung, Deoksugung, and Changgyeonggung — plus Jongmyo Shrine have a long track record of staying open through Chuseok, and in past years Korea.net, the government's own English-language news portal, has reported free admission across all of them for the holiday period. As of this writing, the 2026 program hasn't been posted yet. Those announcements typically land about two weeks out, so check royal.khs.go.kr again in mid-September before you build a schedule around it. Anyone in hanbok gets in free year-round regardless, holiday or not, so that part isn't in question.
Theme parks, chain restaurants, hotel dining, and convenience stores run their normal schedules. GS25, CU, 7-Eleven, and emart24 stay open 24 hours through every public holiday on the calendar, Chuseok included. That's the fallback if you land hungry at 11pm on the 25th and everything around your hotel looks shuttered.
What closes: traditional markets and the family-run end of the restaurant scene. Namdaemun Market and the individual stalls at Gwangjang Market thin out hard on the day itself, even though the market grounds technically stay accessible. Neighborhood barbecue joints, the noodle place that turns out to be one family running the whole operation, small bakeries. These are the ones that vanish for the holiday because the owners are the ones traveling home. Myeongdong, Hongdae, and Gangnam's bigger commercial strips mostly hold their normal hours since they're staffed by shifts rather than a single family, but "mostly" isn't "all," so don't build a must-eat dinner plan around one specific small restaurant without checking its own posted hours first.
Is Chuseok a Bad Time to Visit?
Not necessarily. It depends what you're here for. If your trip is built around a specific neighborhood restaurant scene or a traditional-market food crawl, you're fighting the calendar and you'll lose some of it. If your trip is built around the palaces, Seoul's a genuinely better version of itself: the city empties out as residents head to their hometowns, so tourist-heavy sites you'd normally fight crowds for often see less domestic foot traffic than a regular weekend, even with free admission pulling in more visitors than usual.
Wednesday the 23rd is doing double duty this year — last normal banking day and, if you want the full experience, your last shot at a proper meal at whichever small restaurant is highest on your list before its owners head home for the holiday too.
This is a running news series, not a one-off post — new stories go up twice a day, roughly 7am and 7pm Korea time.
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