I will be arriving into ICN from LAX and need to travel to Suwon. My wife reads and speaks the language, but I do not. Any thoughts on the best way to make this trip with the least hassle? I've looked at a map and it doesn't look to be too far (more than an hour by car but less than 2 hours). We will only be there for a couple of days and will have some luggage, so I'm not sure that we want to be taking buses around. I was thinking along the lines of 1) a car service 2)a taxi 3) renting a car and driving (I did it in Italy, how much worse can South Korea be?? ) and 4) taking a train. While cost is a factor, ease of travel is probably equally important. I'm not one of those people who take the train to 125th street in NYC so the can take the M30 (or whatever it is) bus to LGA for $4.

Thanks

Considering the huge traffic jams in and around Seoul you better add at least an hour if not more to those two. Second thing to consider is that the Korean police will nearly always hold non-Koreans guilty in case of accidents regardless of circumstances. Please make yourself and your wife a favor and take one of the nice limousine buses from ICN.

Do the "limousine buses" go from ICN to Suwon?

Yep, here's a link to all scheduled bus connections from/to ICN.

http://www.airport.or.kr/Eng/transportation/bus.jsp

Thanks for the additional info. I'm pretty confused at this point. I think we'll just take the bus to Seoul the night we arrive and take the train from there to Suwon the next morning. It appears to be less than a 30 minute train ride from Seoul Station to Suwon.

The reason I suggested the bus was that you could bypass central Seoul where the worst traffic is. However, Seoul Station (Yongsan?) is quite spectacular and easily accessible from nearby hotels like the Millennium Hilton or the GH Seoul.

This response is probably way too late for the OP, but there are "limousine" buses that run from ICN directly to Suwon approximately every 20 minutes. The terminal in Suwon is right next to Hotel Castle. From there, take a taxi to wherever you are going. Best to have a card and map in Korean of where you are going unless you speak Korean and know EXACTLY where your destination is.

The buses are very comfortable and great value and take about 1 hour 20 minutes in usual traffic. One way prices were W 12,000 in May 2005.

At ICN, after bag reclaim, go to door # 7, there will be a sign for buses to Suwon, among other destinations.

I would never, ever drive in Korea, at least not in the cities. One of my colleagues even offered my a company car for a weekend, and I said no way. And I have driven throughout Italy.

Bill thanks for the advice. Now having been through the ordeal in both a taxi and on the bus, I can add my $.02 to the pot. TAKE THE BUS! This is coming from someone who really dislikes buses. We arrived in the evening to ICN and we were exhausted. Not wanting to deal with finding a bus and whatever that might have entailed, we hopped in a taxi and $110 (ouch) later we were in Suwon. In retrospect, the hassle factor would have been more than the taxi but not more than we could have handled at the time. After staying at the unimpressive and expensive Hotel Castle, we decided to take the bus back to ICN. As you said, it leaves from right next to the hotel and goes directly to the airport. It was much more comfortable than the taxi, fast, clean, uncrowded and cheap ($25 for both of us). As others before me did, I would recommend this mode of transport to anyone going from ICN to Suwon. If I return to Korea, I would not hesitate to take the bus to another location in Korea either.

As for the driving, since the wife speaks and reads Korean we could get by on that front. I think we could have driven. Driving in Suwon would have been a bit tricky, but I think we could have done it. There simply was no point. The buses were cheap and the taxis around town were fairly inexpensive. The rental and parking would have been more expensive.

Hope this helps the next guy who has to go visit the grandmother-in-law in Suwon.

I've taken the KAL limousine bus from Suwon to ICN several times. Buying the bus ticket and getting on the bus can litterally take less than a minute. I believe the ride is about 30 to 40 minutes.