New Duty-Free Rules: How Incheon Airport is Reducing Wait Times for Travelers

Good news for travelers: if a flight is diverted or canceled because of unavoidable reasons like natural disasters or aircraft defects, the hassle of long waits at the airport to return duty-free purchases should drop significantly.

The Korea Customs Service said that after an exception to duty-free item collection was added to the Enforcement Decree of the Customs Act in February, it finalized revisions to the “Notification on Customs Clearance of Travelers’ and Crew’s Hand-Carried Goods” and began full enforcement on the 1st.

The heart of the revision is simple: when flights are canceled or diverted due to unavoidable circumstances, travelers who bought duty-free items within the personal duty-free allowance (standard 800 USD (approximately 1,066,667 KRW)) are no longer required to return those items. That means eligible travelers can re-enter the country immediately without going through a separate collection process.

If purchases exceed the duty-free limit, only the excess amount beyond the allowance will be subject to collection. Also, items that have already been opened or used will be counted first against the duty-free allowance and thus excluded from collection.

Until now, when departures were canceled because of flight diversions or cancellations, all items bought at duty-free shops had to be returned under the “export condition” rule. The required checks and collection procedures forced every passenger to wait at the airport for roughly three to four hours. There were also persistent complaints that opened items were treated as losses by duty-free retailers.

In fact, cases of passengers returning to the country because of flight cancellations or diversions have risen steadily in recent years — from 36 in 2022 to 65 in 2023, and spiking to 178 in 2024 amid heavy snowfall and other disruptions.

A Customs Service official said the revision will significantly cut the unnecessary waiting and inconvenience travelers have faced during unexpected cancellations or diversions, and added that the agency will keep working to eliminate unreasonable regulations and improve traveler convenience from the public’s perspective.