Los Angeles → Seoul flights

Median LAX–Seoul fare sits at $481 — but outliers dip to $250

Key takeaways

• Median fare is $481, based on 17 daily snapshots of the cheapest cached fares on this route.
• 75% of sampled fares fall at or below $490, meaning the upper end of the 'normal' range is fairly tight near the median.
• Bottom quartile starts at $457, so a fare under that threshold represents a genuinely below-average price worth acting on.
• The $250 low is a significant outlier — roughly 48% below median — and should not be treated as a realistic target without flexible dates and quick action.
• Spread of 96% is wide, indicating meaningful price volatility on this route; monitoring fares over several weeks is likely to surface better deals.

30-day price trend

See full numbers and stats on the LAX → ICN price history page.

The full picture

The LAX–Seoul (ICN) route shows a compressed upper range — with the median at $481 and the 75th percentile at only $490 — meaning most days the cheapest available fare clusters tightly near $481. That nine-dollar gap between median and p75 tells you that on three out of four sampled days, fares were already close to the ceiling of normal. The p25 at $457 is only modestly lower, so the typical "good" fare on this route is roughly $457–$481. Shopping within that band is a reasonable goal for most travelers.

The $250 low is the headline-grabbing figure, but it warrants caution. At 96% spread, the data is heavily influenced by that single outlier (or cluster of outlier days). With only 17 samples, we can't reliably characterize when or how often fares drop that low — only that it has happened within the snapshot window. What we can say is that fares this far below median on transpacific routes typically reflect brief promotional windows, error fares, or heavily restricted itineraries. If your schedule is flexible and you have fare alerts set, chasing the sub-$300 tier is worth attempting — but budget-planning around $460–$481 is more defensible.

In terms of booking horizon, transpacific routes like LAX–ICN historically see more competitive pricing in the two-to-four month advance window, outside of peak Korean holiday periods (Chuseok, Lunar New Year) and summer. The data here doesn't capture departure-date seasonality directly, so that context still matters. One honest caveat: with 17 samples rather than the full 30-day window, these figures carry more uncertainty than usual. The tight p25–p75 cluster could reflect a short period of stable pricing rather than a persistent structural pattern — continuing to monitor is strongly advised before committing.

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