Seoul keeps two big aquariums nine subway stops apart, and a Seoul aquarium ticket costs a different amount in three different places. This page compares SEA LIFE COEX and Lotte World on tanks, tickets and what you actually get for the money.
Updated August 2026
Go to Lotte World Aquarium for the water and to SEA LIFE COEX for the day around it. Lotte is built around an 85-metre tunnel and a 2,200-tonne ocean tank, and its $19.79 ticket is about 26% under the 37,000-won gate price — the biggest genuine saving on this page. COEX has more zones, more small tanks and sits inside Starfield COEX Mall, so the aquarium is one hour of a longer day; its Klook ticket is level with the aquarium's own online price rather than under it. Both take one to two hours to walk.
Key takeaways
Three bookable options: one ticket for each aquarium, and the pass that covers both. Prices were read from the listings in August 2026 and are confirmed at checkout on the booking platform, not here.
Admission to Seoul's mall aquarium in Gangnam, redeemed straight at the gate with the voucher. Level with the aquarium's own online price and about 6,600 won…
The cheaper of the two tickets and the bigger discount: about 27,300 won against a 37,000-won gate price. The catch is the policy — no cancellation…
The only product that covers both aquariums in one purchase: two choices for $37.95 works out at $18.98 each, under either single ticket. It only pays…
Both aquariums hold about 3,500 tonnes of water and roughly 650 species, so the difference is not size. It is layout: Lotte spends its water on a few enormous tanks, COEX spreads it across many small ones.
| Option | Klook price | At the gate | Nearest station | Best for | Book |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SEA LIFE COEX | $20.55 | ₩35,000 | Bongeunsa Exit 7 | Rainy days, small children, a mall day | Check Availability Details |
| Lotte World Aquarium | $19.79 | ₩37,000 | Jamsil Exit 11 | The tunnel, the big tank, the biggest discount | Check Availability Details |
| Klook Pass Seoul | from $37.95 | n/a | Both | Visiting both, or two attractions in one trip | Check Availability Details |
The COEX ticket and the unactivated pass are fully refundable; the Lotte ticket is not.
Gate prices are the aquariums' own walk-up adult rates, read from their websites in August 2026 and converted at ₩1,380 to the dollar.
Pick a date for the COEX ticket and the booking platform opens on that day with its own live price. Everything on this page was read from the listings in August 2026.
You'll confirm the exact date and time on the secure booking page.
Three places sell the same admission — the ticket window, the aquarium's own website, and a resale platform like Klook — and they do not line up the way most guides assume.
SEA LIFE COEX publishes both its prices, so this is checkable. Below is every COEX ticket type at the gate, on the aquarium's own site, and on Klook, converted at ₩1,380 to the dollar on 27 August 2026. The pattern is consistent: booking ahead anywhere saves about a fifth, and where the two online prices differ, the difference is small — except on the tickets that involve a child.
| Ticket | At the gate | Official site online | On Klook | Where it is cheapest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adult (13+) | ₩35,000 | ₩28,000 | $20.55 (~₩28,400) | Official site, by ₩400 |
| Child (3-12) | ₩31,000 | ₩25,000 | no child rate — pays $20.55 | Official site, by ~₩3,400 |
| Couple (2 adults) | ₩70,000 | ₩51,000 | $36.85 (~₩50,900) | Klook, by ₩100 |
| Family (2 adults + 1 child) | ₩101,000 | ₩74,000 | $56.25 (~₩77,600) | Official site, by ~₩3,600 |
When you are adults, when you want the voucher inside the same app as the rest of your Seoul bookings, and when you want a refund option that survives a change of plan — the COEX ticket refunds in full any time before you redeem it, which the aquarium's own advance tickets do not always do.
When you are a family with children aged 3 to 12, buy on the aquarium's website instead. We would rather say that plainly than pretend the ₩3,600 does not exist. The Klook listing simply has no child tier: an eight-year-old is charged the adult $20.55.
One more restriction that catches people out: the COEX offer is not available to Korean passport holders, and everyone must show a passport or valid ID when the voucher is scanned.
Lotte World Aquarium's standing adult admission is ₩37,000. The Klook ticket is $19.79 — about ₩27,300, roughly 26% less, and the retail figure crossed out on the listing is $23.89. That is the largest real discount on this page, and it is the reason Lotte is the better-value ticket even though the two aquariums cost within a dollar of each other online.
The trade is the policy. There is no cancellation: no refund, no date change, no rescheduling once the booking is confirmed. Buy it for a date you are certain about. You also do not walk straight in — the voucher is exchanged for a physical ticket at the group ticket booth first, which several reviewers flag as the one queue of the visit.
Both Seoul aquariums sit in the standard tier of the same attraction pass, which makes the arithmetic unusually simple for once.
Both Seoul aquariums sit in the standard tier of the same attraction pass, so the arithmetic is unusually simple. Prices read from the listings on 27 August 2026.
| What you buy | Price | Per attraction | Refundable? |
|---|---|---|---|
| COEX ticket alone | $20.55 | $20.55 | Yes, until redeemed |
| Lotte ticket alone | $19.79 | $19.79 | No, never |
| Both singles | $40.34 | $20.17 | Half of it |
| 2-choice pass, both aquariums | $37.95 | $18.98 | Yes, until activated |
The $2.39 saving is not the argument — the last column is. With two singles, the Lotte half of your money is locked the moment you book. With the pass, everything stays refundable until the first reservation, and the dates are chosen afterwards.
The pass also carries around twenty other choices, so the second slot does not have to be an aquarium: Seoul Sky sits in the same building as Lotte World Aquarium, which makes a two-choice pass the most efficient half day in Jamsil.
Where it loses, it loses badly. Activate by reserving one attraction within 30 days of booking, then reserve the rest within 30 days of that. Slots sell out, and a partially redeemed pass is not refunded — use only one of your two choices and you have paid $37.95 for a $19.79 ticket.
The older of the two, opened in 2000 in the basement of what is now Starfield COEX Mall, and rebranded from COEX Aquarium to SEA LIFE COEX after Merlin took it over.
The layout is a fixed one-way route through 14 discovery zones — Story of Korean Fish, Deep Blue Sea Tunnel, Secret Garden of Seahorses, Sea at Night, Mangrove & Beach, Penguin's Playground and the rest — holding about 40,000 animals of some 650 species in 183 display tanks. The tunnel section walks you through 2,000 tonnes of water with sharks and sea turtles overhead.
What COEX does that Lotte does not is small and odd. The Wonderland gallery keeps fish in a shower cubicle, a bathtub, an old computer monitor and a toilet bowl; there are touch pools with starfish and shellfish, prairie dogs and a squirrel among the fish tanks, and a mermaid show that runs in Korean and needs no translation. Signage is bilingual on most exhibits.
It divides visitors, and honestly so. The blogger ranking second for this search called the theming "fake plastic" and preferred Lotte's habitats; the aquarium's own review wall is full of families calling it warm and easy to walk with a stroller. Both readings are about the same rooms. If you want naturalistic habitat design, this is not it. If you want an hour indoors that a six-year-old will talk about, it is.
Opened in 2014 under Lotte World Mall in Jamsil, and built around scale rather than variety: 13 themed zones, about 55,000 creatures, and one enormous tank you meet twice.
The route runs river to coast to open sea, and the set piece is the 85-metre underwater tunnel through the main ocean ecology tank — about 2,200 tonnes, with sharks and rays passing overhead. You see the same tank a second time from the escalator, which is the view most reviewers end up photographing. Penguins, sea lions, an otter enclosure, a ray zone and a jellyfish gallery fill out the rest.
It is the smaller of the two by floor area and the more impressive by tank. A reviewer who did both put it plainly: Lotte "is a little bit smaller than the one in Coex but it is still able to give you the same quality". If you are choosing on marine life alone, this is the one.
Lotte World Aquarium's beluga is advertised in the plural on booking platforms. There is one. Bella arrived with two others when the aquarium opened in 2014; one died in 2016, the second in 2019, and she has been alone in her tank since.
After public campaigning the aquarium promised to release her to an overseas sanctuary by 2026. That has not happened — the transfer plan was judged unfeasible this year, and discussions with sanctuaries in Iceland and Canada continue without a date. She is still on display.
We are not telling you to skip the aquarium. We are telling you what you will be looking at, because no listing will.
It is one of the most-asked questions on this search, and the marketing on both sides muddies it. The tank volumes settle it.
COEX bills itself as the largest aquarium in Korea and Lotte claims the world's largest ocean ecology tank. Neither survives contact with the numbers below, which come from the aquariums' published figures and their Wikipedia entries. The honest answer to "what is the largest aquarium in Korea" is Aqua Planet Jeju, and it is a flight away from Seoul.
| Aquarium | Total water | Largest single tank | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aqua Planet Jeju | 10,800 tonnes | 5,300 m³ | Jeju Island |
| Lotte World Aquarium | ~3,500 tonnes | 2,200 tonnes | Jamsil, Seoul |
| SEA LIFE COEX | ~3,500 tonnes | 2,000 tonnes | Gangnam, Seoul |
Within Seoul the two are level on water and close on species — around 650 each. COEX has more tanks and more floor; Lotte has the bigger single tank and the longer tunnel. "Biggest aquarium in Seoul" has no clean winner, which is why the comparison above is built on what you actually experience instead.
Three walk-throughs filmed by visitors, not by the aquariums — the closest thing to standing in each tunnel yourself.
The whole one-way route through the discovery zones, tunnel included.
Video: HG Virtual TourThe 85-metre tunnel and the main ocean tank at walking pace.
Video: Discovery Walking Tours TVBoth Jamsil and Gangnam in a single Seoul day, for anyone weighing the pair.
Video: The Brave TouristVideos are third-party uploads and may show seasonal exhibits or decorations that have since changed.
Both are underground, both connect to the subway without going outside, and both have one exit that is much better than the obvious one.
The exits below come from the operators' own directions. The Bongeunsa route to COEX is the one people miss: Samseong is the station everyone names, but it leaves you a 10-15 minute walk through the mall.
| Aquarium | Line | Station and exit | Then |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEA LIFE COEX | Line 9 | Bongeunsa, Exit 7 | Straight onto the aquarium's basement level — the shortest way |
| SEA LIFE COEX | Line 2 | Samseong, Exit 5 or 6 | 10-15 minutes indoors through Starfield COEX Mall |
| Lotte World Aquarium | Lines 2 and 8 | Jamsil, Exit 11 | Underground passage into Lotte World Mall, then down to the aquarium |
Addresses for a taxi: COEX is 513 Yeongdong-daero, Gangnam-gu; Lotte World Aquarium is 300 Olympic-ro, Songpa-gu. Use Naver Map or KakaoMap rather than Google Maps, which does not give reliable walking directions in Korea.
The two are about nine stops apart on Line 2, roughly 20 minutes plus the walk at each end. Doing both in one day is possible and slightly grim — three hours of dim corridors and no daylight. If you are set on it, the pass is the cheaper way to buy it, and split them morning and late afternoon.
Neither aquarium is unbearable at the right hour, and both are unpleasant at the wrong one.
SEA LIFE COEX opens 10:00 to 20:00 every day of the year, with last admission at 19:00. Lotte World Aquarium opens at 10:00 and its published closing runs to 22:00, later than almost any aquarium a visitor will have been to. Check the operator's page for the day you are going: Lotte adjusts hours around Lotte World's own schedule.
Weekday mornings are the quiet window at both. The crowd builds from late morning, peaks mid-afternoon, and the Lotte tunnel in particular becomes a slow-moving queue of phones. Lotte's late closing is the underused trick — arriving after 19:00 on a weekday gets you the big tank nearly to yourself.
Holidays are the exception to everything. A Klook reviewer who went to COEX on Christmas Day summed it up: "There were especially a lot of people." Both aquariums decorate for Christmas and both are packed for it.
This is the main reason people come, and the age rules are the part that costs money unexpectedly.
At both aquariums, children under 36 months enter free with a paying adult, and each adult can bring only one free infant. Proof of age is required and in practice that means the child's passport — bring it, because staff do ask.
From age three, the pricing diverges. COEX's own site sells a child ticket for 3-12 year olds at ₩25,000 online; the resale listing has no child tier at all, so a child pays the full $20.55. Lotte charges the same price for every age from three up, so there is nothing to optimise there.
Practical things reviewers keep repeating: wheelchairs and strollers rent from the COEX Mall service counter, COEX's lockers take two ₩500 coins, and both routes are flat and stroller-friendly. Neither aquarium allows re-entry, so do the toilets, the café and the gift shop on your way through rather than stepping out and back.
Short list, all from the operators' own terms, all of them things people find out at the door.
The variety of sharks and the underwater tunnels are incredible, I really enjoyed my time there! At around noon they do feedings for some of the animals and then after that they do the feedings for the sharks, which I highly recommend staying for!
The themed zones make the experience more interesting, and it's enjoyable for both kids and adults. The aquarium is easy to explore and not too overwhelming, which makes it perfect for a relaxed visit.
This aquarium has a lot of cute little sea animals. It is not big, but can give just enough fun for kids and adults who likes sea animals. About the price it is not that cheap at all, because it is not very big. I walked there around for 1-1.5 hour.
This aquarium is a little bit smaller than the one in Coex but it is still able to give you the same quality. When we were there, it had a theme with Pingu.
Dated reviews from the Klook listings for both aquariums, read in August 2026. We quote visitors' own words and do not edit them.
For marine life, Lotte World Aquarium: the 85-metre tunnel and the 2,200-tonne ocean tank are the two best things in either building. For a visit with small children, or on a rainy day when you want a mall attached, SEA LIFE COEX — more zones, more small tanks, touch pools and a mermaid show.
Lotte, by a clear margin. Its ticket is about 26% under the ₩37,000 gate price, while the COEX ticket matches what the aquarium charges on its own website. The catch is that the Lotte ticket cannot be cancelled or moved.
Aqua Planet Jeju, with 10,800 tonnes of water — about three times either Seoul aquarium. COEX and Lotte hold roughly 3,500 tonnes each, so the "largest in Korea" line on Seoul signage does not hold up. The figures side by side.
Walk-up adult admission is ₩35,000 at COEX and ₩37,000 at Lotte. Booking ahead takes roughly a fifth off either. The full price table sets the gate, the official sites and the resale platform side by side, including the child and family cases where the aquarium's own site wins.
One to two hours at either. Both listings suggest 1-3 hours; visitors who timed it report 1 to 1.5 hours at a normal walking pace, longer if you wait out a feeding.
Yes, both sell at the door, and both charge more for it. Advance tickets scan at the gate — at COEX you walk straight in with the voucher, while at Lotte you exchange it for a paper ticket at the group booth first.
No single ticket covers both, but Klook Pass Seoul does: two choices for $37.95 against $40.34 for the two tickets bought separately, plus free cancellation while the pass is unactivated.
One. Bella has been alone since her two tank-mates died in 2016 and 2019, and the aquarium's promised 2026 release to a sanctuary has not taken place. More on what the listings leave out.
Seoul aquarium guides
Five pages that answer the questions this comparison raises, each checked in August 2026.
Seoul Aquarium Guide
