The Integrated Palace Ticket bundles entry to four royal palaces and Jongmyo shrine into one pass, sold by South Korea’s heritage authority. It only saves money once a visitor plans to enter three or more of the five sites within its validity window. Below that, buying single tickets is cheaper and simpler. The rest of this article works out exactly where that line sits.
What the ticket actually bundles
The pass covers five sites: Gyeongbokgung (경복궁), Changdeokgung (창덕궁), Changgyeonggung (창경궁), Deoksugung (덕수궁), and Jongmyo (종묘). All five sit within a few kilometres of each other in central Jongno-gu and Jung-gu. It is sold by the Korea Heritage Service, the state body that manages Korea’s palaces and royal shrines, at the ticket office of each site. Each palace also keeps its own separate admission booth for visitors who only want one.
Every one of these five closes on a different schedule, and getting the day wrong is the single most common reason a bundled ticket goes unused. Gyeongbokgung closes on Tuesdays; the other four close on Mondays. Our full breakdown of palace closing days is worth checking before building an itinerary around this pass.
The three-month clock
The ticket is valid for three months from the date of purchase, not from first use. Each of the five sites can be entered once. It is not a multi-entry season pass — a second visit to the same palace needs a fresh single ticket. That single-use-per-site structure is what makes the maths below straightforward.
The break-even maths
The Korea Heritage Service publishes both the bundle price and each palace’s individual admission fee on its own site, and both move over time, so treat the figures below as the shape of the calculation rather than today’s exact numbers. As a rough guide at time of writing, the bundle sits around 10,000 KRW, and single admission to most of the five runs roughly 3,000–4,000 KRW each. Confirm the current figures directly with the Korea Heritage Service before relying on them.
- Two palaces: roughly 6,000–8,000 KRW paid separately. The bundle at ~10,000 KRW costs more. Skip it.
- Three palaces: roughly 9,000–12,000 KRW separately, against the same ~10,000 KRW bundle. This is the break-even zone — the pass usually wins by a small margin, sometimes ties.
- Four or five palaces: roughly 12,000–20,000 KRW separately. The bundle clearly wins, saving the cost of one or two single tickets.
So the working rule is simple: three sites is the minimum for the pass to make sense, and it should be four or five before the saving feels worth the planning. A visitor with time for only two palaces should not buy it at all.
Two complications that change the number
Changdeokgung’s Huwon, the Secret Garden, is not part of this ticket at all. It is a separate, timed, capped walk that must be booked ahead of the main palace entry. Buying the Integrated Ticket does not get a visitor into the Secret Garden, and forgetting this is a common source of wasted mornings.
Jongmyo is guided-tour-only on most days. Free walking is only allowed on Saturdays and on Culture Day, the last Wednesday of each month. On a guided-tour day, the ticket still admits a visitor — but only at the tour’s scheduled time, not on arrival. That timing constraint matters more to an itinerary than the price does.
Hanbok changes the equation entirely
Anyone wearing hanbok gets free entry to all five palaces and to Jongmyo. This is a standing policy, not a limited promotion, and it applies at every one of the sites the Integrated Ticket covers. A visitor planning to wear hanbok for most of a day in Bukchon or around Gyeongbokgung should compare that against the pass before buying anything. Our explanation of how the hanbok exemption actually works covers the rental logistics and the rule itself in full.
Fitting it into a short stay
Getting between the five sites is straightforward on foot or by subway, and fares there follow the same distance-based logic covered in our guide to how T-money works, including the tap-out rule that catches most first-time riders. If a palace day runs into the evening, note that subway service, like every line in the city, has a last-train cutoff that varies by station and direction — our piece on working out that cutoff explains how to check it rather than guess.
More broadly, this site’s thesis about Seoul’s old sites holds here too: the palaces themselves are priced close to nothing, whether bought singly, bundled, or bypassed entirely in hanbok. What the city actually charges for is the machinery built around them, not the palaces themselves. Further context on how each site individually is priced and organized sits in our palaces and shrines archive, and broader transport planning is covered in the getting around archive.
For how this site sources and checks claims like the ones above, see our about page.
Sources
Palace and shrine admission structures are published by the Korea Heritage Service, the government body responsible for Korea’s palaces and royal shrines. Changdeokgung’s designation is documented by UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre. General visitor information for Seoul’s palaces is also maintained by the Korea Tourism Organization.
Access Seoul is an independent guide written from published, checkable sources. We have not visited the places described here and we do not publish personal recommendations or invented ‘local favorites’ — where something is singled out as notable, we say who says so. Opening times, fares, closures and prices change at short notice, so treat everything here as a starting point and confirm with the museum, operator or venue directly before building a day around it. We give no advice on visas, insurance, health or safety; use your own government’s official guidance for those.