Seoul's Quietest Subway Stations: Empty Platforms & Edges

Every list of Seoul subway stations is about the crowds: Jamsil, Hongik University, Gangnam. This one goes the other way. These are the stations where the doors open on an empty platform, where the train is four cars long, where the nameplate says Seoul and the street outside belongs to another city — and a few stations that are no longer there at all.

They are not dead places. Most sit next to a stream, a park, a pass or a cemetery, and they make good starting points for a quiet half-day.

What is the least-used subway station in Seoul?

Namtaeryeong on Line 4 and Dorimcheon on Line 2, and the two keep swapping places. We averaged every day of 2025 in the Seoul Open Data Plaza’s station-by-station file, which counts transit-card boardings and alightings. Namtaeryeong came out at 2,577 a day, Dorimcheon at 2,617. In 2024 the order was reversed, and Seoul Metro’s own count for 2024 also put Dorimcheon last, at 2,615 a day, according to the Financial News report of its annual figures. For scale, the busiest station, Jamsil, handled 156,177 a day in 2024, per Seoul city.

📉 Quietest single-line stations on Seoul subway Lines 1–9, 2025 average per day (transit-card boardings + alightings; transfer stations left out because the file splits them by line)

Rank	Station	Line	Per day
1	Namtaeryeong	4	2,577
2	Dorimcheon	2 (Sinjeong branch)	2,617
3	Sindap	2 (Seongsu branch)	3,311
4	Gubanpo	9	3,395
5	Jangam	7	3,916
6	Gaehwa	9	4,144
7	Beotigogae	6	4,372
8	Dangogae	4	4,424
9	Hangnyeoul	3	4,886
10	Yongdu	2 (Seongsu branch)	4,970
11	Dokbawi	6	5,399
12	Yongdap	2 (Seongsu branch)	5,833

The list changes slowly. In 2013 a Seoul city report on the quietest station on each line named Dorimcheon (about 1,500 a day then), Jichuk and Namtaeryeong (about 2,000 each), and Magok on Line 5. Magok has since turned into a business district — see our Magok guide — and Jichuk, now ringed by apartments, handled more than 14,000 a day in 2025. Beotigogae, Seoul’s deepest station, is already covered in our beautiful stations guide.

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The quiet five at a glance

Namtaeryeong (Line 4)

The last Line 4 station inside Seoul before the line crosses into Gwacheon, and on our count of 2025 data, the least-used station in the city. There is little around it except the ridge road and green belt — which is also why it’s worth a stop.

The name has a better story than the station. Gyeonggi Province’s magazine tells it: the pass was once called Yeou-gogae, Fox Pass, for the foxes that lived there. When King Jeongjo crossed it in the late 18th century and asked its name, a Gwacheon official named Byeon could not bring himself to name a “wicked animal” to the king, so he answered Namtaeryeong: the first great pass south of the capital. The king accepted it. (The odd twisted tunnel just south of the station is in our strangest station design article.)

Get off and look: the Namtaeryeong pass itself, which is the starting point of the Samnam-gil Hanyang Gwanmun-gil, a 9.7 km Gyeonggi walking route along the old southern highway to Indeogwon (about 2.5 hours).

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Dorimcheon (Line 2, Sinjeong branch)

One stop from Sindorim, one of the busiest interchanges in the city, and almost nobody gets off. Dorimcheon is the first station on the short Sinjeong branch, named after the stream it sits beside, close to where the Dorimcheon flows into Anyangcheon.

Seoul city finished a continuous deck path along the stream here in late 2025, flat enough for strollers and wheelchairs, replacing an embankment that used to ice over in winter.

Get off and look: the deck path, three minutes from Exit 1; follow it to Sinjeong Bridge and the Anyangcheon confluence, where a 1,050 m barefoot mud trail runs along the embankment.

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Sindap (Line 2, Seongsu branch)

Sindap’s name is a splice: Sin from Sinseol-dong and dap from Dapsimni, according to Seoul city. The station is above ground on the Seongsu branch, where four-car trains shuttle at long intervals — and the operators used the open air to plant a small garden on the platform. Seoul’s media hub described it in 2025 as one of a kind in the Seoul subway: plum blossom and forsythia in late March, greenery behind the screen doors the rest of the year.

Get off and look: the platform garden itself (no need to tap out), best in late March and early April. The end of the Cheonggyecheon walking path at Sindap Railway Bridge is covered in our Cheonggyecheon guide.

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Yongdap (Line 2, Seongsu branch)

Another splice name, from Yongdu-dong and Dapsimni. For years Yongdap was one of the last stations without a step-free route from street to platform. On June 28, 2023 Seoul Metro opened two elevators reached by a glass-walled walkway about 16 m above the ground, and Seoul city noted the view: the Gunja train depot on one side, the Cheonggyecheon on the other. With it, 320 of the 337 stations in the Seoul subway had a step-free route. Seoul city put Yongdap’s traffic at around 5,000 people a day.

Get off and look: ride the elevator walkway for the view over the depot’s rows of parked trains and the stream.

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Which "Seoul" stations aren't in Seoul?

Seoul Grand Park and Racecourse Park on Line 4 are in Gwacheon, and Jangam on Line 7 is in Uijeongbu. The subway map doesn’t stop at the city line, and several stations with Seoul-sounding names or Seoul operators sit in Gyeonggi Province. Our guide to the Gyeonggi cities next to Seoul covers the wider picture.

Seoul Grand Park (Line 4)

Seoul Grand Park opened in 1984, when the zoo was moved out of Changgyeongwon — the palace grounds of Changgyeonggung in central Seoul — to Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province. Seoul city still runs it. Away from the zoo’s peak days the station is calm: about 9,100 boardings and alightings a day in 2025.

Get off and look: from Exit 2, the zoo, Seoul Land, the theme gardens and botanical garden, and the forest paths around the reservoir. Prices are in our theme parks comparison.

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Racecourse Park (Line 4)

One stop on from Seoul Grand Park, also in Gwacheon, is the station for Seoul’s horse-racing track, with about 10,900 boardings and alightings a day in 2025. It also has an unusual rider profile: YTN reported in January 2024 that 43.4% of its users in December 2023 rode free — the highest share of the 51 stations on Line 4, and 17th in the whole Seoul-area network. In Korea, free rides mostly mean passengers aged 65 and over.

Get off and look: the racecourse grounds next to the station; check the race calendar first if you want to see horses running.

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Jangam (Line 7) — closed until October 30, 2026

Line 7’s northern terminus, in Uijeongbu, has long been one of the network’s quietest: about 3,900 a day in 2025, and named as Line 7’s quietest station in Seoul city’s 2013 report. Right now it is shut. Gyeonggi Province closed Jangam from October 2 to 30, 2026 to demolish and rebuild the station for the new Dobongsan–Okjeong railway. During the closure Line 7 ends at Dobongsan, and free shuttle buses run between Dobongsan and Jangam from 5:00 to midnight, every 7–15 minutes on weekdays and 10–20 minutes on weekends and holidays. Trains return to a temporary Jangam station on October 31.

Get off and look: for now, take the shuttle from Dobongsan; the area around Dobongsan station is covered in our Changdong & Dobongsan guide.

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Which other stations are quiet enough to enjoy?

Gaehwa, Hangnyeoul and Dongjak are all under 5,000 riders a day per line, and each has something next to it.

Gaehwa (Line 9)

The western end of Line 9, past Gimpo Airport, with about 4,100 boardings and alightings a day in 2025. It works more as a bus interchange than a destination: Seoul Shinmun reported that a transfer centre opened beside it in April 2012 with 399 park-and-ride spaces and 12 bus routes, seven from Seoul and five from Gyeonggi Province. Don’t confuse it with Gaehwasan, a busier station on Line 5.

Get off and look: the end of the line and the transfer centre’s bus bays, where Seoul and Gyeonggi buses meet.

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Hangnyeoul (Line 3)

Seoul city describes the SETEC exhibition centre as “located at Hangnyeoul Station,” and that is most of the station’s business: crowds for a trade fair, near-silence on other days. The name means “crane rapids.” As The Korea Economic Daily has explained, old maps including the Daedongyeojido marked the spot as Haktan, and the subway revived the native Korean form, hak plus yeoul (shallow, fast water), where the Yangjaecheon meets the Tancheon.

Get off and look: the Yangjaecheon and Tancheon confluence, one of the calmer stream walks in Gangnam; our Seoul streams guide has the route.

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Dongjak (Lines 4 and 9)

A transfer station between two lines, yet in 2025 each line logged under 4,000 boardings and alightings a day here. It also has an exit no one has ever used. Seoul Shinmun reported in September 2023 that Seoul councillor Choi Min-gyu had found a sixth, emergency exit in Dongjak Parking Neighborhood Park — escalators and stairs from the second basement to ground level, built for the Line 9 station in 2009 and never used in 14 years. The paper quoted him calling it the only abandoned underground space in the Seoul subway.

Get off and look: Seoul National Cemetery, which gives the station its full name, Dongjak (Hyeonchungwon), is right beside it.

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Which Seoul stations have disappeared?

Seoul has lost several railway stations, and a few are still worth looking for. The old Sinchon station building on the Gyeongui Line survives and is covered in our buried history article. These three are further gone.

Hwarangdae (old Gyeongchun Line)

The Gyeongchun Line ran through here for 71 years, from July 25, 1939 to December 21, 2010, when the line was rerouted. The old Hwarangdae station building is Registered Cultural Heritage No. 300 and is now the centre of Hwarangdae Railway Park, with old trains on display, and the empty tracks became the 5.6 km Gyeongchun Line Forest Path, opened in stages between 2015 and 2017. It is a different station from today’s Hwarangdae on Line 6.

Get off and look: the railway park and the forest path; our Nowon Gyeongchun Line guide has the cafés and noodle shops along it.

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Seongdong (Gyeongchun Line terminus)

Seongdong was the Seoul end of the Gyeongchun Line when it opened in 1939. When the Seongdong–Seongbuk section was removed in 1971, the station went with it. Nothing of the building remains.

Get off and look: a stone marker reading “Seongdong Station Site” on Wangsan-ro, near Exit 2 of Jegi-dong Station (Line 1).

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Seodaemun (Seoul’s first railway terminus)

When the Gyeongin Line from Incheon reached Seoul in 1900, its terminus here was called Gyeongseong Station; it was renamed Seodaemun Station in 1905. In 1919 the Seodaemun–Namdaemun section fell out of use, and the station vanished with it.

Get off and look: a small “Seodaemun Station Site” marker to the left of the entrance of Ewha Womans Foreign Language High School, near Seodaemun Station on Line 5.

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All the stations in this guide

🚉 Quiet, edge and lost stations — what's there and what to see

Station	Line	Why it’s here	Get off and look
Namtaeryeong	4	Quietest station in 2025	Fox Pass and the Samnam-gil walking route
Dorimcheon	2 (Sinjeong branch)	Seoul Metro’s least-used in 2024	Stream deck path from Exit 1
Sindap	2 (Seongsu branch)	Platform garden on a four-car branch	Plum and forsythia in spring
Yongdap	2 (Seongsu branch)	Glass walkway opened in 2023	View over Gunja depot and Cheonggyecheon
Seoul Grand Park	4	“Seoul” station in Gwacheon	Zoo, gardens and forest paths, Exit 2
Racecourse Park	4	43.4% free riders, per YTN	Racecourse on race days
Jangam	7	Uijeongbu terminus, closed Oct 2–30, 2026	Shuttle bus from Dobongsan
Gaehwa	9	Western end of Line 9	Bus transfer centre
Hangnyeoul	3	Busy only on expo days	Yangjaecheon and Tancheon confluence
Dongjak	4, 9	Quiet transfer with a never-used exit	Seoul National Cemetery
Hwarangdae (old)	Gyeongchun Line, closed 2010	Station turned railway park	Old trains and the forest path
Seongdong (lost)	Gyeongchun Line, closed 1971	Former line terminus	Marker on Wangsan-ro
Seodaemun (lost)	Gyeongin Line, gone 1919	Seoul’s first railway terminus	Marker by Ewha Womans Foreign Language HS