Head to any subway station in Myeongdong and take the blue line (aka line # 4) and head towards Chungmoro or Dongdaemun History & Culture Park.
Get off at Dongdaemun History & Culture Park station. You’re going to transfer lines here.
Take the green line (aka line #2) headed towards Sindang or Wangsimni stations.
Get off at Wangsimni station.
You will transfer to the Jungang line (the teal blue colored line) and head towards Cheongnyangni or Mangu.
At this point you can either get off at the Sabong or Mangu station and transfer to the Gyeongchun line and head towards Gapyeong station.
Gapyeong station will be your final stop to get to Nami Island.
One notable thing for anyone taking this method of transport to Nami Island; we had to get off at Maseok station as the train announced it was the last stop and everyone to get off. I am not sure if this is has changed or they only do this certain times during the year, but just be on the lookout for this (this was as of October 2014). When we asked the train director for Gapyeong he said there would be another train coming in just across the platform that would further take us to Gapyeong. So don’t freak out, just ask for Gapyeong and they will point you in the right direction (for us we just needed to turn around, no further walking or getting to another platform). From there we boarded and headed to Gapyeong.
Once you get off at Gapyeong station, head outside outside. Once outside Gapyeong station, walk towards the street. You will see a line of cabs waiting outside. Tell them you want to go to Nami Island and they’ll take you straight there. This is about a 5-10 minute drive.
They cab will drop you off at the end of the parking lot, and then you’ll have to walk through a sea of tour buses to get to the ticket booth. Once you’re there at the ticket booth buy your ticket & enjoy the island!
You can either get to the island via ferry, or for the more adventurous, via zip line. The zip line entrance will be on your left hand side of the parking lot (if heading towards Nami Island.. I definitely wanted to do this, but couldn’t risk losing my precious DSLR camera! There were a couple of people zipping above us when we were on the ferry and it looked like so much fun!
Pay attention since you’ll be doing a few transfers.
Download the Seoul Subway app on your phone. It’s a map of all the lines and stations that you can reference, if need be. It helped me a lot during my trip.
The further away you get from Seoul, the less frequent the trains come.
Get on the subway early!! You want to get time Nami Island as early as possible to avoid the crowd.
It would be better to get a t-money card (multiple journey card) and use that during your trip to Nami and throughout your stay in Seoul. It’s incredibly convenient and so cheap! The fare to Nami Island (on a t-money card) will be around 1950 won each way (that’s less than $2 USD each way).
You can either buy these cards from a kiosk in the subway station or at any of the convenience stores near you (like a GS25). That way you won’t have to buy a separate ticket for each trip you decide to make (aka single journey card or ticket).
A t-money card costs 2500 – 5000 won depending on where you buy it. That’s less than $5 USD. These cards can be re-loaded with more money at any point in time.
Korea really has a great subway system. This long trip out of Seoul may seem daunting at first, but it’s fairly easy once you look at the map and decide where to go. Everything is color coded and it’s easy when they have each stop/station announced ahead of time.
During the time I went it was somewhere between $8-12 USD.