Songdo Cable Car and Coastal Walkway: What to Expect

A first for Korea, rebuilt for a second life

Songdo Cable Car has real history behind it: it opened in 1964 as South Korea's first cable car line, ran for decades, and eventually closed before being rebuilt and reopened under the name Busan Air Cruise. The route runs roughly a mile over Songdo Bay, connecting Songdo Beach with a hillside station with sea views.

It's consistently one of Busan's better-reviewed paid attractions among first-time visitors, in part because the ride itself — rather than a single view point — is the main event.

Standard vs. glass-floor cabins

Two cabin types are available: the standard enclosed Air Cruise cabin, and the Crystal Cruise cabin with a glass floor that lets you look straight down at the water and rocks below. The glass-floor option is the more popular choice for photos, but it's not necessary to enjoy the ride — the standard cabin has the same views out the sides.

Cabins can sell out at peak times (weekends, sunset hours), so buying a ticket online in advance or arriving earlier in the day reduces wait time. The operator also sells a more expensive skip-the-line ticket for anyone who'd rather pay than queue.

The Songdo Coastal Walkway, underneath

Below the cable car line, a narrow walkway about 800 meters long follows the cliffs from the east end of Songdo Beach to Amnam Park — roughly 20 minutes one way, and free. It runs past rock that Seo-gu district dates to around 100 million years old, with three small viewing points, suspension-bridge sections over gaps in the cliff, and fishing spots on the rocks below.

It's also newly back. The walkway was closed after a rockfall in May 2020 and the heavy rain and typhoons that followed that summer, which collapsed slopes and broke bridges and railings. Seo-gu repaired the damaged 340-meter stretch for about 1.3 billion KRW and reopened the full route on April 13, 2025, five years after it shut.

It pairs naturally with the cable car, since both run between Songdo Beach and Amnam Park: one-way cable car tickets exist if you'd rather ride one direction and walk the other. Check the map on site for the path between the upper cable car station and the walkway's Amnam Park end before committing to that plan.

The Songdo Cloud Trail, over the water

Songdo Beach has a second free walk, and this one goes out over the sea rather than along the cliffs. The Songdo Cloud Trail, opened in 2015, is a 365-meter bridge that curves out from the beach into the bay. Parts of the deck are tempered glass or open grating, so you can watch the water moving underneath, and Visit Busan calls it the largest skywalk in Busan. From the far end you get the beach, the ships anchored off the coast and the cable cars passing overhead in one view.

It's open every day from 06:00 to 23:00, which makes it the one Songdo sight you can still do after the cable car and the coastal walkway have closed. Getting there is the same trip as the cable car: Metro Line 1 to Jagalchi Station, Exit 2, then bus 7, 26, 30, 71 or 96 to the Songdo Beach stop. Both the trail and the cable car start from Songdo Beach, so you can walk between them along the sand.

Don't confuse it with the Songdo Yonggung Cloud Bridge, a separate 127-meter suspension bridge from Amnam Park to a small uninhabited island further along the coast. It replaced an old bridge to Turtle Island that was damaged by a typhoon and taken down in 2002. The suspension bridge keeps much shorter hours — 09:00–18:00 from March to September and 09:00–17:30 from October to February, with last entry 30 minutes before closing — and is closed on the first and third Monday of every month and on Lunar New Year's Day and Chuseok. To get there, leave Jagalchi Station by Exit 1 and walk to the Jagalchi Station or Chungmu-dong intersection bus stop, then take bus 7 (or 30 or 71 from the Chungmu-dong intersection) to the Amnam Park stop.

Getting there

There's no direct subway station at Songdo Cable Car itself. From Jagalchi Station (Metro Line 1), leave through Exit 2 and take bus 6, 7, 30 or 96 to the Amnam-dong Community Center stop, then walk about 10 minutes toward the cable car station. From Nampo Station, Exit 8 (near the Lotte Department Store) has buses 7, 9, 30 or 71 on the same route.

A taxi from Jagalchi or Nampo-dong takes about 10 minutes and typically costs 6,000–8,000 KRW on the meter. It combines naturally with a Jagalchi Market or BIFF Square visit on the same day, since all three are on the same side of the city.

Practical tips

• Go near sunset for the best light, but expect the largest crowds at that time too
• The glass-floor cabin costs more — decide in advance whether the photo is worth it to you
• Songdo Beach itself, at the base of the cable car, is a smaller and quieter beach than Haeundae, worth a short walk before or after the ride
• Check the operator's site for current hours — cable cars are sometimes paused in high wind
• The coastal walkway closes earlier than the cable car — plan to walk it in daylight and ride afterward, not the other way round
• The Cloud Trail stays open until 23:00, so leave it for last if you're also riding the cable car and walking the cliffs
• Busan's other hillside cable car, at Geumgang Park, climbs onto Geumjeongsan in the north of the city — see the Geumjeongsan National Park guide for that one