Short answer: three restaurant meals a day in Busan come to ₩18,972–30,515 ($13.70–$22.04) at official average prices — a gimbap breakfast, a noodle or rice lunch, and a stew or soup dinner. The arithmetic is below, so you can rebuild it around your own appetite.
How much is a day of restaurant meals in Busan?
| A budget day | Price | USD | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Breakfast | Gimbap (1 roll) | ₩3,543 | $2.56 |
| Lunch | Jajangmyeon (black-bean noodles) | ₩7,000 | $5.06 |
| Dinner | Kimchi jjigae set meal | ₩8,429 | $6.09 |
| Total | ₩18,972 | $13.70 |
| A fuller day | Price | USD | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Breakfast | Gimbap (1 roll) | ₩3,543 | $2.56 |
| Lunch | Bibimbap | ₩9,686 | $7.00 |
| Dinner | Samgyetang (ginseng chicken soup) | ₩17,286 | $12.48 |
| Total | ₩30,515 | $22.04 |
Two assumptions worth stating. Every figure is a Busan-wide average from the official dining-out survey, so any single restaurant will sit a little above or below it. And the combinations are ours: many people in Korea skip breakfast or pick it up at a convenience store, so a sit-down gimbap breakfast is the generous version of a Korean morning rather than the typical one.
What do individual dishes cost in Busan?
| Dish | Unit | Busan average | USD |
|---|---|---|---|
| Samgyeopsal (grilled pork belly) | 200g | ₩18,175 | $13.13 |
| Samgyetang (ginseng chicken soup) | 1 serving | ₩17,286 | $12.48 |
| Naengmyeon (cold noodles) | 1 serving | ₩11,857 | $8.56 |
| Bibimbap | 1 serving | ₩9,686 | $7.00 |
| Kalguksu (knife-cut noodles) | 1 serving | ₩8,071 | $5.83 |
| Kimchi jjigae set meal | 1 serving | ₩8,429 | $6.09 |
| Jajangmyeon (black-bean noodles) | 1 serving | ₩7,000 | $5.06 |
| Gimbap | 1 roll | ₩3,543 | $2.56 |
Prices are per serving except pork belly, which the survey normalises to 200g of meat rather than a finished meal — one reason it stays out of the daily totals above.
Is Busan cheaper than Seoul?
On the survey’s own figures, Busan is cheaper on every one of the 8 dishes it prices in both cities. The same budget day that costs ₩18,972 in Busan costs ₩20,146 in Seoul.
| Dish | Busan | Seoul | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Samgyeopsal (grilled pork belly) | ₩18,175 | ₩21,321 | -14.8% |
| Samgyetang (ginseng chicken soup) | ₩17,286 | ₩18,154 | -4.8% |
| Naengmyeon (cold noodles) | ₩11,857 | ₩12,615 | -6.0% |
| Bibimbap | ₩9,686 | ₩11,769 | -17.7% |
| Kalguksu (knife-cut noodles) | ₩8,071 | ₩10,038 | -19.6% |
| Kimchi jjigae set meal | ₩8,429 | ₩8,654 | -2.6% |
| Jajangmyeon (black-bean noodles) | ₩7,000 | ₩7,654 | -8.5% |
| Gimbap | ₩3,543 | ₩3,838 | -7.7% |
The official survey cautions that the restaurants it visits change over time, so these figures are not built for comparing one region with another, or one year with the next.
That gap is real in the sense that the survey found it, and smaller than it looks in the sense that it is not a like-for-like race. The survey visits different restaurants in each city, and it says so itself. Read it as “eating out here is not expensive by Korean standards”, not as a percentage you can bank.
Meat dinners and drinks have their own pages
The one big upgrade this page does not price is the grilled-meat dinner. The survey’s pork-belly figure is 200g of meat, not the meal that forms around it — the rice, the stew, the drinks — and portion sizes vary enough that folding one number into a daily total would be a guess dressed as arithmetic. It has its own arithmetic instead: see what Korean BBQ costs in Seoul, including what two real menus charge — those are Seoul menus, and the table above has this city’s official pork-belly figure for comparison.
Alcohol is priced on its own page too, for the same reason: the interesting number there is not one figure but the gap between the shop and the restaurant. See what soju costs in Korea.
What does this budget not include?
Anything the survey does not price, we do not price. That excludes cafés and coffee, delivery and its fees, street food, snacks and desserts — not because they are cheap or unimportant, but because this site does not print numbers it cannot trace to a source. The eight dishes above are what the Ministry survey actually collects in Busan restaurants, and the totals stay inside that list.
What this page cannot tell you
What this page is not: the figures are city-wide averages, published monthly and marked provisional, so the restaurant in front of you will not match them exactly. The daily totals are our combinations of surveyed dishes, not a surveyed cost-of-living figure. And it speaks for Busan only, and the survey itself cautions against comparing one region with another.
Official figures: the Chamgagyeok dining-out survey, June 2026, Busan. Daily totals are sums of those figures, in the combinations stated above. Converted at ₩1,384 = US$1, the Korea Eximbank dealing basis rate for 27 August 2026.
Bottom line. ₩18,972–30,515 a day covers three sit-down meals, in these combinations, at Busan’s official average prices. A grilled-meat dinner or a night of drinks moves it up from there — and both of those have their own pages, with real menus attached.