South Korea to Japan, an Overnight Ferry Ride
This will be more of a quick informative post on the ferry. We found that a lot of the information on the internet was lacking in some mundane questions we had. I was hoping to more thoroughly investigate all the ferry amenities, but unfortunately this particular night I had been feeling really tired, so I ended up going to bed really early, and not taking as many on board photos as I would have liked. But I can at least answer some questions and Andrew can share some thoughts.
We took the overnight Kampu Ferry, which left Busan at 9:00pm, and arrived in Shimonoseki at 7:45am the next day. There is also an overnight ferry in the reverse direction, as well as other ferry operators. We boarded the ferry Saturday September 27, 2025.
Booking the ferry
If you look up ferries between South Korea and Japan, the Camellia Line is the one that usually pops up. That had been my original plan to use them to go from Busan to Fukuoka. I had done all my planning and research around them but at the time you could only book 3 months out and they hadn’t posted their schedule for the year. Around July I logged in to book our tickets only to find out that they run every day except one time a month they randomly operate in the opposite direction. Yes, that one day fell on the exact day I had planned to take the ferry. Why do they do this?!
After my moment of panic (and by moment I do mean several days), I stumbled across the Kampu Ferry which operates along roughly the same overnight timeline, but instead of Fukuoka, it goes to Shimonoseki. Since we were planning to take the train to Hiroshima after the ferry the location change didn’t affect us too much. I had to wait until 2 months out to book with Kampu, but I was thankfully able to do so fairly easily.Â
As mentioned in my planning post, we did have to call our credit card company and find a staff person who could make our credit card 3D secure so that the ferry could actually process our card. With the 3D secure requirement, it doesn’t even show up as a declined charge on the card, so it confused some of the credit card staff.Â
I believe you can book the ferry more last minute, but we wanted a private room, and there are a limited number of them. We booked the cheaper, “first class western style room” but they do have a couple different room options. The cheapest, and likely what you’d get if you wait until more last minute to book would be the “second class shared rooms” which are dorm style and separated by gender.
The Kampu Ferry had less English information on it, so that’s why I wanted to write up this blog.
Finding the Ferry Terminal
It was a long 15 min walk from the Choryang subway station. (Side note as I am relooking up the transportation route for the blog, it does appear that there is a bus that gets you to the front of the building for essentially the same price, but most transit buses we saw specifically said “no large luggage” so it may or may not have worked).
Along with being a decent distance from the subway station (which did list the ferry port on the stop) it was along a weirdly empty sidewalk adjacent to a busy road. Honestly it felt like the sort of thing you find in America if you try to take public transit to get places, not what we had been coming across in Korea!Â
While walking along the road, there was at least one time where I had wondered if we were somehow going the wrong way. Based on everything else we had come across I would have thought there would have been wayfinding signs or something. It didn’t help that we had to walk across a busy road under construction. There were temporary crosswalks with sandbags and platforms for us to walk along. For a city where it was hard to get away from people, it was weird to have this stretch where we only saw two people before reaching the ferry port. (And they were both on bicycles! I guess we found where the cyclists were hiding?)
The terminal building itself was intimidatingly huge, but fortunately as we got closer to it there were plenty of signs saying “arrival/departure gate 1” complete with directional arrows so it wasn’t hard to find where in the building we were supposed to go.Â
Checking In
Once inside the Busan Port International Passenger Terminal we were directed to the 3rd floor for departures. We came in at the first level, for parking and on our way up the escalators we noticed the 2nd floor, for arrivals, had a cafe, a 7-11, a global ATM & bank, as well as a tourist info desk, and a few other odds and ends places that weren’t really open. The 3rd and 2nd floors felt very similar with the exception of the bank.
The website, and our booking reservation was under “Kampu”, but the only open desk said “Pukwan”. They had the same logo, just facing opposite directions, maybe a Japan vs Korea thing? Either way it was the only desk open, so I suppose we couldn’t mess it up, but if you are leaving on a day the Camellia or other ferries are operating it’s definitely something to be aware of!
Officially, check-in was between 2:30-5:30pm. We got there around 3pm which was plenty early but it was nice to have some time to just sit. Unlike the Seoul train station and various subway stations we had been in, the ferry terminal was fairly quiet and we had lots of seats to choose from. Although as it got closer to 5:30 it definitely got louder and busier but never so much that all the seats filled up. There were ample restrooms and a water station as well.
At check-in we had to pay an additional 18,000 won per person in cash for various taxes and port fees. It states this all over the ticket so we knew, but I wanted to point it out.
Something we weren’t anticipating however was the sign saying cash only on the boat. And we had been so careful to use up all of our cash! We pulled out about $25 worth of “just in case” won.Â
A lot of the reviews/reddit posts talked about the restaurants on board not being open on every run and the vending machines only accepting yen which we had no way of getting. So we wanted to make sure we wouldn’t starve and hit up the 7-11 for another convenience store meal. (There was another one on the 3rd floor, although you could freely wander the building). Going to 7-11 also gave us a chance to use up the remainder of our T-money card balance (Transpo cards).
Security
At 5:30 we were allowed to go through the security checks. Everyone lined up and they checked our boarding pass and passport. It was a very speedy process, taking us about 20 min.Â
We thought we were going to board the ship, but in actuality they were just letting us into the secured waiting area. This area again had lots of seats and restrooms, and a decent size duty free shop and duty free pickup. Â
We decided to sit down because boarding itself wasn’t until 6:10 but a lot of people immediately got in line. Although some people just used their bags to hold places in line which seemed like cheating to me, but what do I know.
In this area there was also a display regarding banned items to bring into Japan. Most of the thigs were expected (seeds, raw vegetables, weapons, smut, etc) but the one that surprised us was “meat products”. Since we aren’t in the habit of purchasing meat we hadn’t thought much of it except the sign specifically said “no meat, this includes cat food” and we had just bought some salmon treats for Little John that morning. Andrew did a little additional reading and checked to see if there was beef, chicken, or pork in them (since fish aren’t meat for this rule), ultimately we had to throw them away, sorry Little John.
Boarding
Once boarding actually started we got in line. Even though we were near the back it only took another 25 min to get on the boat. And a lot of that time was walking and taking weird hallways to get to the actual boat dock – it reminded me of airports if you’ve ever had to fly out of a gate that isn’t accessed right from the main waiting areas.Â
Right as we got on the boat we were given our entrance forms for Japanese immigration and customs. Most information about entering Japan for tourists is given for airports (which makes sense) and they pretty much all advise you to use the Visit Japan Web service. This service is only available for airports and if you arrive by boat you must use the paper forms so that’s what we did.
Once on the boat we accidentally walked past the key pick up area and had just gone straight to our room and had to double back to the guest services desk, whoops.Â
Amenities
The boat itself felt like a budget cruise line. There were floors with the various sleeping rooms, a concierge desk, several larger rooms with seats and tables spread about, as well as vending machines, an onsite convenience store, coffee shop, and restaurant. (Although the coffee shop never opened while we were on board). They even had a cheesey photo-op corner with a cruise ship backdrop and props, although I only saw parents with small children use it. We were also able to walk around the outside of the boat to take in the sites.
There was even a simplified Japanese style bath, or as they called it, “grand bath” on board. Although, there were specific “bath time” hours posted where you were allowed to use them. I, being so tired, never made it down, but being the only bath option for those in shared rooms, they can’t turn away tatoo’d people! Andrew said the guys side had very hot water in the soaking tubs, and felt like a less aesthetic version of bath part of Spa Land (the Korean jjimjjilbang in Busan we had gone to the day before). It also felt very similar to the other japanese baths Andrew used throughout the rest of the trip, just a bit more budget. Just like Spa Land, and Japanese style baths it was gender divided baths and no clothes allowed.
Our sleeping room was similar to what you find on a modern cruise ship. We had bunk beds, that did come with curtains which were nice when I went to bed so much earlier than Andrew. The room also had a tiny bathroom and shower. There was a desk, small TV, and like all the Korean/Japanese hotels, they gave us slippers to wear!Â
Meal Time
Several blogs mentioned the restaurants on board not always being open, so not knowing what the food situation would be we had brought convenience store meals with us banking on there being a microwave on board. After dropping our bags off in our room, we grabbed our food and started the hunt. There was a seating area outside the convenience store on the 1st floor where lots of people were already hanging out, on the 2nd floor there was the restaurant and a smaller seating area with booths next to the coffee shop, and on the 3rd floor there was a ballroom/lounge/bar type space with tables spread throughout. Instead of being located on the 1st floor next to the convenience store, they mysteriously hid the 3 microwaves on the third floor in the 3rd floor lounge area. We found them after asking at the guest services desk and fortunately snagged the last available table nearby.Â
The 3rd floor area had a stage, where there might have been a performance or karaoke available later, and what appeared to be a bar that was not open for business. We settled into the table with lounge style chairs to eat. The room had very high energy with lots of families gathering and people drinking soju and beers with their dinners.  I was so jealous of all the picnic meals others had brought; some folks had brought pizza in little heat pouches, and one lady was even prepping two whole rotisserie chickens for her family! But plenty of people were eating packaged dinners like us, in fact we had to wait in line to use the microwaves. The microwave line was slowed down because their menus and buttons were all in Japanese while the majority of passengers were Koreans so everyone had to use their translation apps to figure out how to heat up their food.
While we didn’t eat at the restaurant, it was open while we were there. They had a menu board posted, and strict set hours. We had wandered by towards the end of meal time just to look at the menu and one of the staff came out to tell us it was too late to eat there. Based on when we went by and the opening hours you would need to arrive very close to the opening time in order to be served. So for dinner that would need to be your first stop after getting your key. They also had a breakfast, but with the boat landing at 7am, I didn’t want to get up early enough to eat their set breakfast. As suspected, the restaurant was cash only. They only took won, but there was a sign saying that the guest service desk would exchange yen to won if needed.Â
We did confirm that the vending machines only took yen even though we didn’t buy anything. The on board convenience store was also cash only, Andrew only made one purchase with won and we did not see any signs regarding yen so we assume like the restaurant they only took won. I’m not sure if that would be the opposite case for the boat in the other direction but it sure didn’t seem like it.
General
After eating we explored the boat a little and were thankful we weren’t in the second class cabins near the engine room, but as I mentioned earlier, I was feeling really tired so I ended up calling it a night and going to sleep pretty early. Andrew opted to use the onboard “grand bath” and after bathing he explored some more. The boat didn’t actually leave the dock until 9pm, and I was in bed before then, but Andrew went out on deck to watch us go under the famous Busanhangdae bridge which they light up at night. And apparently there had also been a fireworks show somewhere in Busan that Andrew was able to see from the boat. Man you just miss everything when you’re tired. But at least I was rested for the adventures to come in Japan!
On board we did see 4 bike tourers. 3 of them were heavily loaded, while the last was staying in hotels. They had stored the bikes in hallways near the entrance, although I don’t know if they would have been able to fit too many more without the bikes being obnoxiously in the way! We briefly had a chance to talk with some of the tourers at various points and it did seem like a fun adventure.
Deboarding
In the morning they started making announcements in Japanese, Korean, and English on the intercom around 7 or 7:30am telling us to turn in our keys and line up in the lobby. Again people used bags to hold their place in line, but when the staff directed us to a specific spot in line we opted to hang out there with our luggage.
After filing off the boat we were funneled into a small room with stanchions snaking us back and forth so that we could have our passports checked one at a time. Because there was a huge Expo there, everyone kept asking if we were going to go to Osaka. Â
After the passport check we were separated by nationality and sent to customs to have our bags searched for banned items. This is where our cat treats may have been found had we not thrown them away and we would have gotten in trouble, as their informational videos said “I didn’t know, is not an acceptable excuse”. Yikes!
Once our bags were checked we were off the the boat and in a very small port in Shimonoseki. Huge culture shock going from a place where everything was written in Korean, Japanese and English, to mostly only seeing Japanese. We found the restrooms and deciphered our way to exit to the subway station.
Unlike Busan, the Shimonoseki walk from the port to the train station was a pleasant raised walkway, and only took about 5 minutes. And within 20 minutes of entering Japan, Andrew managed to lose his wallet! … But that’s a story for my next post.
Final Thoughts
Overall I would recommend the overnight ferry. I don’t know how it compares cost wise, but it was definitely a neat experience. We did save money by not needing to find a hotel (it also helped us get more locations in since I had set ourself a 2 night minimum for every hotel we stayed in, and the ferry didn’t really count as a hotel.)
Time wise since we had to get there so early, by 5:30pm for a 9pm departure, it’s not the most time efficient form of transportation, but it was definitely more pleasant than airplanes tend to be. And we were on our boat with access to our room by 6:45 pm. So honestly it was a nice forced rest in the middle of our vacation. I tend to vacation hard not wanting to waste any time, which can be exhausting.
Overall I thought it was neat, and if I do a similar style trip I would 100% take the ferry again, but I would try to bring a better dinner.
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