The Best Ways to Fly to South Korea with Points and Miles

BY 

Stephen Au

- UPDATED: January 16, 2020

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South Korea is a small peninsula that’s full of fantastic culture, delicious street food, and beautiful nature.

South Korea is a dense country, known for K-Pop, Korean barbecue, economic growth, and legendary gamers. If South Korea is not already on your bucket list, be sure to add this amazing country right to the top!

In this guide, we’ll be diving into the best ways to fly to Korea with points and miles. There are 7 airlines that fly nonstop to South Korea from North America and 6 airlines from the U.S.

With so many options, it’s important to focus on the best value for your points.

Since South Korea is such an accessible country from North America, we’ll talk about nonstop flight options only. Let’s get to it!

Most Affordable Airlines to Book Flights to South Korea

South Korea is the second-closest Asian country to America, behind only Japan. Furthermore, South Korea represents an important business hub for many Americans. Luckily, there are many ways to fly to South Korea with points and miles.

Generally speaking, award availability on Korean Air and Asiana Airlines, the two largest airlines headquartered in South Korea, is generous both with far-in-advance and close-in booking.

We’re going to be analyzing other nonstop options too, including Delta Airlines, United Airlines, American Airlines, and even Hawaiian Airlines. Award availability on these U.S. airlines is difficult to come by, but is not impossible, especially when booking near your departure date.

All three of the main alliances are represented in this guide: Star Alliance, Oneworld, and SkyTeam. There’s going to be more representation from Star Alliance and SkyTeam, due to the fact that Asiana is a member of Star Alliance and Korean Air is a member of SkyTeam.

Let’s get down to the analysis.

All Nippon Airways (ANA) Mileage Club

It’s no secret that ANA is arguably the best frequent flyer program in the world. The plentiful airline partners, stellar redemption rates, and awesome open-jaw/stopover allowances make this our first place winner.

With ANA, you have the option to fly Asiana Airlines or United Airlines to South Korea. While both of these options are valid, you’ll generally want to stick with Asiana due to their superior hard and soft product.

Asiana Airlines flies from a variety of different cities. Their best business class product is known as Smartium, we recommend choosing it if it’s available.

While there are some restrictions with using ANA miles, it may be worth it if you can get the best deals. ANA doesn’t allow one-way redemptions and they generally pass on fuel surcharges. However, their round-trip award prices are phenomenal, particularly in economy and business class.

That being said, ANA employs 2 separate award charts:

1. Flights on ANA partners
2. Flights on ANA

In our case, we’re going to be looking primarily at award chart number 1, since Asiana and United are ANA partners. Here’s how much ANA charges for round-trip flights between the U.S. and South Korea on airline partners:

The value of ANA miles is optimized primarily with business class redemptions. A lot of the value in economy is diminished by the cost of taxes and fees.

Hot Tip: Want to get a better idea on taxes and fees? Check out our guide to Airline Fuel Surcharges.

Here are some examples of routes you can take:

• Los Angeles (LAX) — Seoul-Incheon (ICN) round-trip for 95,000 ANA miles + $317 in taxes and fees for Asiana Business Smartium Class
• New York City (JFK) — Seoul-Incheon (ICN) round-trip for 95,000 ANA miles + $317 in taxes and fees for Asiana Business Smartium Class
• San Francisco (SFO) — Seoul-Incheon (ICN) round-trip for 95,000 ANA miles + $317 in taxes and fees for United Airlines Business Class

Your only nonstop option flying on United Airlines to Korea is the San Francisco (SFO) — Seoul-Incheon (ICN) service.

ANA’s website enables for bookings to be completed online. Follow these steps to do so:

1. Go to ANA’s website.
2. Click ANA Mileage Club on the top-right side of the homepage.
3. Click International then Award Reservation. Log in with your ANA Mileage Club number and password.
4. Type in the desired cities, dates of travel, number of passengers, and cabin class. After that information is filled out, click Search.
   • ANA transfer times are not instant. Be sure to account for this when booking awards flights.
5. Finish your booking by paying for any taxes and fees.

Earning ANA Mileage Plan Miles

ANA is currently transfer partners with American Express Membership Rewards and Marriott Bonvoy.

Recommended Amex Cards (Personal)

Recommended Amex Cards (Business)

American Express Membership Rewards is a 1:1 transfer partner with ANA and is one of the easiest ways to earn a lot of ANA miles. Keep in mind that transfers aren’t instant, as it typically takes 2 – 3 business days for transfers to execute.

Marriott Bonvoy transfers at a 3:1 ratio. You’ll also receive an additional 5,000 ANA miles for every 60,000 Marriott points transferred, which brings your total up to 25,000 ANA miles. Transfers can take up to 7 business days to fulfill with Marriott Bonvoy.

Bottom Line: There are a ton of ways to use ANA miles for loads of value. The best sweet spot in our opinion is business class redemptions. You can book round-trip business class on any partner for 95,000 ANA miles and ~$300 in taxes and fees. There are 2 transfer partners, and this makes it easy to earn ANA miles.

Emirates Skywards

The following award redemption method is one that’s not well known, but extremely effective. If you want to book Korean Air business class and have a ton of flexibility, but you don’t have a lot of Marriott points, utilizing Emirates can be your saving grace.

Korean Air and Emirates are partners, which means that you can use Emirates Skywards miles to book flights on Korean Air.

Although Emirates is known for offering a phenomenal first class product, their frequent flyer program leaves a lot to be desired for booking Emirates flights. If you want to fly to South Korea, it can offer a great redemption opportunity.

Currently, Emirates Skywards charges these prices for flights between North America and South Korea on Korean Air:

For travel on Korean Air, this is one of the cheapest ways to attain business class awards, as long as you’re open to paying for fuel surcharges. The only “drawback” is that stopovers, open-jaws, and one-way flights aren’t allowed.

Hot Tip: Need some ideas of cities to fly out of with Korean Air? Check out our definitive guide to Korean Air U.S. Routes.

The best way to book this type of award flight is to search availability on Alaska Airlines and call Emirates to confirm the booking:

1. Visit Alaska Airlines’ booking portal.
2. Select Round-trip, type in your cities, number of passengers, and departure and return dates. Be sure that Miles only is elected in the Award type and Use miles is checked under Flight type & travelers.
   • If you want to use a flexible search, check the box that says Award calendar.
3. Korean Air doesn’t make a lot of award flights available to partners like Emirates and Delta. You’ll probably need to play with the dates. When you find do find some availability, write down all the information including flight numbers, dates, class of travel, and the number of passengers.
4. Call Emirates Skywards at +1-800-777-3999 and feed the flight information to the representative. Complete the award booking by providing your credit card information to pay for taxes and fees and pay the appropriate mileage cost.

Here are some examples of routes you can take:

• Washington D.C. (IAD) — Seoul-Incheon (ICN) round-trip for 105,000 Emirates miles and $317 in taxes and fees for Korean Air Apex Suites business class
• Atlanta (ATL) — Seoul-Incheon (ICN) round-trip for 70,000 Emirates miles and $317 in taxes and fees for Korean Air economy class

Earning Emirates Skywards Miles

American Express Membership Rewards, Capital One, and Marriott Bonvoy are transfer partners with Emirates Skywards. This is a crucial strength for booking Korean Air awards. Korean Air is transfer partners with only Marriott, so the ability to earn Emirates miles further boosts the strength of this redemption.

American Express Membership Rewards is a 1:1 transfer partner. Transfers are typically instant.

Capital One Rewards is a 2:1 transfer partner. Transfers are typically instant.

Marriott Bonvoy is a 3:1 transfer partner. Transfers typically take around 6 days. For every 60,000 Marriott points you transfer to Emirates, you’ll receive 20,000 Emirates miles plus a 5,000-mile bonus.

American Express and Capital One have both been known to offer transfer bonuses, so be sure to hold out for those to make your points go further.

Recommended Capital One Cards (Personal)

Etihad Guest

Etihad Guest is yet another unexpected frequent flyer program for flights to South Korea. And, Etihad isn’t in just any alliance, it partners with American Airlines.

Etihad Guest’s award chart for American Airlines is better than American Airlines’ own award chart. Round-trip economy tickets cost 50,000 miles, while business class tickets cost 100,000 miles. One-way tickets are half the cost.

If 50,000 miles for a one-way business class flight sounds good to you, you’ll be pleased to find out it gets even better. American Airlines operates the 787-9 Dreamliner, which is a great product.

Unfortunately, they only operate one route to Korea:

• Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) — Seoul-Incheon (ICN)

Award availability is difficult to find, but those who want to fly on American Airlines and save a bundle on points may be willing to put in the extra effort to get this outsized value.

Here’s the process you’ll need to follow to book AA business class using Etihad Guest miles:

1. Go to British Airways’ website, and log in with your Executive Club ID and Password.
2. Type in the desired route, dates of travel, and business or economy class.
3. Once you’ve located availability, write down your flight numbers, dates, and times.
4. Etihad Guest’s Serbia Call Center is the best for booking flight awards. Call them at +1-877-690-0767. Press 1 for English, and then press 4 (don’t press 2 for “first and business class”). Press 1 to book or change a flight. Then press 1 again to book or change a flight with Etihad Guest miles.
5. Feed the representatives your flight information.
6. Ticket the reservation and pay for taxes and fees.

Earning Etihad Guest Miles

Etihad Guest is transfer partners with 4 award currencies: American Express Membership Rewards, Citi ThankYou Rewards, Capital One Rewards, and Marriott Bonvoy.

Hot Tip: For more ideas to get miles, check out our best ways to earn lots of Etihad Guest miles.

American Express and Citi transfer at a 1:1 ratio. Capital One transfers at a 2:1.5 ratio. Marriott Bonvoy transfers at a 3:1 ratio with a 5,000 Etihad Guest mile bonus for every 60,000 points transferred.

American Express transfers are instant, Citi transfers take up to 7 days, Capital One transfers take up to 36 hours, and Marriott takes around 5 days.

Korean Air SKYPASS

Korean Air’s frequent flyer program is called SKYPASS. It used to be a Chase Ultimate Rewards transfer partner, but this is no longer the case.

Korean Air SKYPASS is great because they offer one of the only ways to book first class on Korean Air with points and miles. Additionally, one-way flights on Korean Air are bookable, instead of just round-trip, when spending Korean Air miles.

Keep in mind that Korean Air redemptions with SKYPASS are subject to seasonality. Korean Air charges the following mileage prices for one-way flights between the U.S. and South Korea:

Round-trip flights are simply double the mileage and fees. Korean Air first class is an excellent product, and using SKYPASS is the only practical way to book it.

Best of all, you can book Korean Air first class completely online. If you’re open to booking over the phone, you can actually request an award hold of up to 30 days while transferring Marriott points to Korean Air.

Hot Tip: Need help booking? Check out our step-by-step guide on booking Korean Air first class.

Here are some great redemptions you can make:

• Chicago (ORD) — Seoul-Incheon (ICN) one-way, during off-peak season for 80,000 Korean Air miles and $159 in taxes and fees for Korean Air first class
• Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) — Seoul-Incheon (ICN) one-way, during off-peak season for 62,500 Korean Air miles and $159 in taxes and fees for Korean Air business class
• New York City (JFK) — Seoul-Incheon (ICN) round-trip, during off-peak season for 160,000 Korean Air miles and $317 in taxes and fees for Korean Air first class

Earning Korean Air SKYPASS Miles

The only transfer partner of Korean Air is Marriott Bonvoy. As a result, the best way to earn Korean Air SKYPASS miles is by transferring Marriott points.

Recommended Marriott Cards (Personal)

Both Chase and American Express offer co-branded Marriott credit cards with huge sign-up bonuses.

Marriott points transfer at a 3:1 ratio. If you transfer 60,000 Marriott points to Korean Air, you’ll earn another 5,000 bonus miles to bring your total up to 25,000 miles. Transfer times take quite a while, sometimes as long as 7 business days. 

Hot Tip: Need some more inspiration on earning miles? Check out our guide on the best ways to earn lots of Korean Air miles.

Avianca LifeMiles

Avianca LifeMiles is one of the most underrated booking programs. It used to be difficult to accrue any appreciable number of LifeMiles due to the lack of viable transfer partners. However, ever since American Express was introduced as a transfer partner, the situation has greatly improved.

Avianca LifeMiles enable you to book on any Star Alliance airline, which means you can leverage both Asiana Airlines and United Airlines flights. Best of all, they don’t pass on fuel surcharges on award flights. They’ve recently removed their award chart, but they currently use a region-based award chart.

Here’s how much awards cost on one-way flights to South Korea:

On the surface, this might not seem terribly attractive. However, LifeMiles is known to offer promos of up to 20% off, even in first class! This could bring a one-way first class flight down to 72,000 LifeMiles.

Additionally, there are often transfer bonuses from American Express and Citi. If you’re able to stack these transfer bonuses with the LifeMiles promos, you can secure first class for as little as 54,000 miles. To make things even better, fuel surcharges aren’t charged.

To book award travel on Avianca LifeMiles, follow these directions:

1. Visit LifeMiles.
2. Log into your LifeMiles account by entering your LifeMiles number and password.
3. Change the language as necessary by clicking the flag icon in the top-right corner.
4. Click Fly on the top banner of the landing page.
5. Type in your flight information, including airports, number of passengers, and class of booking.
6. Select your flights and pay with your miles along with any taxes and fees to complete your reservation. A $25 award booking fee is charged for each way. This means round-trip flights are charged a $50 award booking fee.

Here is a great redemption you can make:

• Seattle (SEA) — Seoul-Incheon (ICN) one-way in first class for 90,000 LifeMiles + $61 in taxes and fees for Asiana Airlines first class

Earning Avianca LifeMiles

Avianca LifeMiles are very easy to earn. In fact, you can transfer American Express Membership Rewards and Citi ThankYou Rewards points at a 1:1 ratio. Sometimes, LifeMiles even offers generous transfer bonuses of up to 30%.

You can also transfer from Capital One Rewards at a 2:1.5 ratio. If you have a bunch of Marriott points, you can transfer at a 3:1 ratio. Transferring 60,000 Marriott points gets you a 5,000 LifeMiles bonus.

Besides these transfer partners, you can earn lots of miles from the co-branded Banco Popular Avianca Vuela LifeMiles credit card.

Lastly, LifeMiles routinely offers huge sales of up to 125 to 150% more miles. Buying LifeMiles outright can make for some cheap first and business class redemptions.

United Airlines MileagePlus

United offers some decent opportunities to fly to Korea with points and miles. Specifically, the most attractive redemptions are on United’s own flights, as they’re cheaper than partner flights.

United Airlines features an extremely easy award booking process, no fuel surcharges, and the ability to transfer from Chase Ultimate Rewards. These are the main strengths of United MileagePlus.

Here’s how much it would cost to redeem for one-way United flights to South Korea:

Here’s how much it would cost to redeem for one-way partner flights to South Korea:

As you can see, using United miles for partner flights is significantly more expensive in business and first class, so you may want to avoid that, unless you have a bunch of United miles sitting around.

We give mention to United because the booking process is extremely easy. The search engine on United.com is excellent and you can take care of your booking completely online.

To do so, follow this process:

1. Go to United’s website.
2. Click either One-way or Roundtrip
3. Check Book with miles
4. Enter your flight information, which includes booking class, number of travelers, flight dates, and origin and destination cities.
5. Pick your flights and ticket the reservation.

That it!

Hot Tip: If you’re a United Airlines elite member, you may have access to additional award availability for United flights. 

Earning United Airlines MileagePlus Miles

United Airlines is the first frequent flyer program in this guide that’s a Chase Ultimate Rewards transfer partner. Along with Chase, United MileagePlus is transfer partners with Marriott Bonvoy.

Chase transfers at a 1:1 ratio instantly while Marriott Bonvoy transfers at a 3:1.1 ratio instantly. Furthermore, you’ll receive a 15,000 Marriott point transfer bonus if 60,000 Marriott points are transferred. This will bring the miles up to 27,500 miles for every 60,000 Marriott points.

Additionally, Chase offers a bunch of co-branded United credit cards to earn lots of United Airlines miles directly.

Recommended Chase Cards (Personal)

Recommended Chase Cards (Business)

Virgin Atlantic Flying Club

Although Virgin Atlantic isn’t in any airline alliances, it partners with Delta Airlines to offer award travel with Virgin Atlantic Flying Club miles.

The Virgin Atlantic Flying Club award chart is very attractive. In fact, where Delta charges up to 300,000 miles for a one-way, international business class flight, Virgin Atlantic only charges 60,000 miles.

Additionally, fuel surcharges on Delta are never passed on to Virgin Atlantic.

You can book Delta One Suites on the A350 and 777 with Virgin Atlantic miles. Here are the routes on which Delta One Suites are offered to Korea:

There’s also a Delta One route, which does not offer the newest Delta One Suites offering:

The main difficulty lies not in Virgin Atlantic, but in Delta. Delta doesn’t release much award availability in Delta One Suites. However, Virgin Atlantic does allow for 5-week award searches, which is great. Unfortunately, you can’t search for flights to South Korea on their website, which complicates things.

However, it may be worth doing the extra legwork to locate award availability if you can secure Delta One Suites for 60,000 miles one-way and $10 in taxes and fees.

Here’s how you can book Delta One Suites to Korea with Virgin Atlantic Flying Club:

1. Visit Delta Airlines.
2. Enter your travel dates, airports, and number of passengers. Click Advanced Search right under the number of passengers.
3. Select Show Price in Miles. Choose Best Fares for Delta One if flying in business class or Main Cabin if in economy.
4. Click on the red return arrow.
5. Search for flights that are at the lowest level business class award. In this case, it’s currently 100,000 Delta miles. Disregard the Delta miles, but find the flights that cost 100,000 Delta miles each way. Write down the flight numbers, dates, and times.
6. Call Virgin Atlantic at +1-800-365-9500.
7. Feed them the flight numbers and other information from the Delta search.
8. Confirm award availability and complete your award reservation.

Bottom Line: The process to book Delta awards on Virgin Atlantic is normally able to be completed online. However, flights to Korea are currently an exception due to IT issues with Virgin Atlantic. If you do your homework, you can fly in business class for 60,000 miles and $10 in taxes and fees one-way. Best of all, Virgin Atlantic is transfer partners with all flexible currencies.

Earning Virgin Atlantic Flying Club Miles

You can earn Virgin Atlantic miles by transferring from Chase Ultimate Rewards, Citi ThankYou Rewards, American Express Membership Rewards, and Marriott Bonvoy.

Other Options to Fly to Korea

We analyzed a slew of different booking options for award flights to Korea. However, we didn’t include them due to unfavorable redemption rates, convoluted booking processes, or even a lack of viable transfer partners.

Some of the airlines we analyzed included Air France/KLM Flying Blue, Virgin Australia, Singapore KrisFlyer, Alaska Airlines, Lufthansa Miles & More, Asiana Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific Asia Miles, JetBlue, and Delta SkyMiles.

Final Thoughts

There are tons of ways to book award travel to South Korea as there are many airlines that operate nonstop flights to Korea due to its geographic location near the U.S.

We went over a variety of booking options for the three major alliances. In addition, we discussed the pros and cons of each method, so now you have the inside scoop on the best ways to fly to South Korea with points and miles.