Surprise, we went to Japan!

If you were in a country on a 90-day tourist visa– which we aren’t, weren’t, and never will be– then it’s easy to keep to a pre-determined 3-month limit living in a country. However, there are occasionally valid reasons for a person to extend this 90-day threshold, and when they do so, they’ll probably want to do it as cheaply as possible. This is one of our rare informative posts, designed specifically to help someone extend their tourist visa in Korea 90 days by way of a short stay in Japan.

To get to Tsushima Island, you’re going to have to take a ferry from the Busan International Ferry Terminal to a small island, halfway between Korea and Nagasaki, called Tsushima Island. Book this ferry in advance, because even though it wasn’t full, we’ve learned never to take vacancy for granted. Dae-A Shipping operates a ferry (called the Sea Flower 2) between Pusan and Tsushima, which we were lucky to have a Korean friend contact for us.

To get to Pusan, we left Seoul Station on the KTX at 5:30 am. The train costs 50,000 KRW, and it’s an amazingly smooth and easy 3 hours to the southern coast. You’ll arrive at roughly 8:30am. We booked our ferry tickets for the day after, and were instructed to arrive by 9:45am to pick up our reserved-but-not-purchased tickets. To kill the day, we spent some time sleeping on the beach in Pusan, wandering through the Mallik Fish Market and walking to Haeundae Beach. That night, we spent a mere 9,000 KRW a person to sleep in a delux jimjilbang (a public bath with a large communal sleeping room) up the hill from Haeundae Beach.

Gwangali Beach, Pusan

The next day, we arrived at the terminal (the subway stop is right next to Busan Station, where we arrived, called International Ferry Terminal) and picked up our tickets, surprised to have to pay a tax in cash of 6,000W per person. We left through Korean customs to board the ferry, getting the much-needed exit stamp, just one day before our (theoretical) visas would expire. The ferry ride took about 2 hours across incredibly rough seas. We were given anti-nausea medication by the ferry hostess, which turned out to not be powerful enough, as the boat crashed through 20-foot swells with the sound of vomiting ajima (elderly Korean women) all around us.

We arrived and passed through a swine-flu check prior to getting a stamp at the Japanese border. In another, mysterious layer of security, we were stopped outside the ferry terminal by a local police officer, who asked us who we were and what we were doing in Korea before letting us enter the country.

A view of sleepy Tsushima from the hill.

We spent only 45 minutes on Tsushima Island before boarding the return ferry, but we had a little time to climb a small hill and sit around in the terminal. In the terminal, you can pick up your return tickets on the second floor about 30 minutes prior to departure where you’ll be expected to shell out 400¥ per person in exit taxes (cash only). When you return to Pusan, pass through customs and swine flu containment to get your coveted stamp, and take the subway back to Busan Station, where you can catch the KTX for 50,000 KRW, or the slower, less comfortable Korail train for 24,000 KRW. If you have the money to spare, I suggest the KTX.

Just like that, simple, cheap visa run for only around $184.00 USD.