Review: Korean Air First Lounge Seoul Incheon Airport (ICN)

During my Aria Suite Adventure to Hong Kong, I had an extended layover at Seoul Incheon Airport, prior to departing to New York in Korean Air’s A380 first class. Having recently reviewed the Korean Air Business Lounge, I was looking forward to checking out the Korean Air First Lounge, as I hadn’t visited in many years.

I don’t want to be unfairly critical of the Korean Air First Lounge. It’s modern, has a good selection of a la carte dining, and it’s relatively quiet. However, I’d argue that there’s very little that’s “first class” about this lounge, which basically sums up the entire Korean Air first class experience, if you ask me. This is a far cry from the world’s best first class lounges.

Korean Air First Lounge Seoul Incheon location

The Korean Air First Lounge Incheon is located in Terminal 2, near gate 248. So if you’re originating at the airport, after clearing immigration and security, you’ll want to turn right and follow the signage in the direction of gates 208-248.

After walking for a while, you’ll see the elevators and escalators leading up to the lounge on the right side.

The entrance to the lounge is located at the top of the escalator. While there’s one shared reception desk, the Miler Club is located to the left, and the First Class Lounge is located to the right.

Upon having my boarding pass scanned, the attendant asked me to write down my name and phone number on a Post-it note, as Korean Air offers first class passengers customized luggage tags. When I wrote down my name, her eyes grew wide, and she said “too long.” I guess if your name is more than a few characters long, you’re in trouble. So she instead made the luggage tag with my initials.

Korean Air First Lounge Seoul Incheon hours

The Korean Air First Lounge Incheon is currently open daily from 4AM until 10PM, covering virtually all eligible departures from the airport. For what it’s worth, I was visiting the lounge mid-afternoon, until my evening departure to New York.

Korean Air First Lounge Seoul Incheon entry requirements

The Korean Air First Lounge Incheon is available exclusively to Korean Air first class passengers. So you can either use it if you’re departing in Korean Air first class, or if you’re connecting from a Korean Air first class flight to another Korean Air flight.

There’s no way to access this lounge based on elite status, or based on a ticket on a partner airline.

Korean Air First Lounge Seoul Incheon layout & seating

As you enter the Korean Air First Lounge, you’ll first find yourself walking down a long hallway. This really sets the tone for what to expect in terms of design. Does this hallway look like what you’d expect at a carrier’s most premium lounge, or more like an entryway into a reasonably nice hospital or office?

Anyway, the lounge has over a dozen lockers, where you can store belongings during your stay, in addition to an area with reading materials.

At the end of the hall, you’ll find yourself in the main room of the lounge. This has to be one of the quirkiest lounge setups out there, as each seating area has its own “cocoon,” so that all passengers have a pretty high level of privacy. Below are some pictures from each side of the lounge, to give some perspective.

The seating is varied, with each “zone” seating anywhere from one to four people. There’s everything from daybeds, to chairs with ottomans, to seats facing one another.

Then there’s a glass partition separating the above part of the lounge from the dining area, with the latter space having a total of seven tables, most of which seat two people, except one table, which seats four people.

The lounge has a somewhat private room that’s off to the side of the dining area, with a single massage chair.

In the hallway along the entrance, there are three rooms, labeled “Comfort Suite,” “Luxe Suite,” and “Premium Suite.” When I asked the staff what these rooms were, they just shrugged their shoulders.

Curiosity got the best of me, so I just opened one of these doors, and I guess they’re private rooms for VIPs.

In terms of views, the lounge only faces the interior of the terminal, so it really isn’t much of an inspiring view.

Furthermore, there seemed to be construction going on in the terminal during my visit, which caused an unbelievable amount of noise. Below is a video that I took during my time in the lounge, to give you a sense of how loud it was. That level of noise went on for roughly an hour.

Admittedly that’s not the lounge staff’s fault, but there was no sort of acknowledgement or apology for this, or offer or suggestion to maybe instead go to another lounge. I don’t fault the staff for this, but I think at a more attention-detailed airline, this would’ve been handled differently.

Korean Air First Lounge Seoul Incheon food & drinks

The Korean Air First Lounge Incheon has a small buffet with a limited number of snacks and drinks, and then there’s an a la carte dining selection.

In terms of food, the buffet selection included sweets and fruit.

Then below is a look at the drink selection, including alcoholic and non-alcoholic options.

Beyond the above, I was presented the lunch and dinner menu, along with the drink list, which you can find below.

The lounge’s catering is provided by the nearby Grand Hyatt Incheon, which I recently stayed at. I was super boring (I know!), and ordered the tuna and spring greens on whole seat sourdough. It was surprisingly tasty, so I have no complaints about the food quality.

Later on, I had some green tea ice cream.

To drink, I had a Coke Zero, and then later on, I had a cup of coffee.

Korean Air First Lounge Seoul Incheon bathrooms & showers

The Korean Air First Lounge Incheon has luxurious bathrooms and showers, though in very limited quantities.

The lounge has a single, individual bathroom for each gender, which are spacious, with a bidet-style toilet and Aesop amenities. The only thing is that a single bathroom isn’t really sufficient during peak times, since there will be periods where there are dozens of people in the lounge.

The lounge also has a single shower suite. Again, it’s super nice, but I have to imagine that during busier periods, there are times where there’s quite a wait to shower, while you’d think that would be a basic amenity in a first class lounge.

Korean Air First Lounge Incheon service

Generally in a first class lounge, you expect attentive service, where staff frequently check on you, to see if you want anything. It’s the opposite here.

As soon as I arrived at the lounge, one of the employees followed me to my seat, and then stood there while holding the menus for me, with a notepad out, ready to take my order. Like, I didn’t even have the chance to sit down or take off my coat, so it’s not exactly a relaxed arrival experience.

I asked if I could have a few minutes, but then she never returned again. It’s not just that the staff weren’t attentive, but they seemed to actively avoid eye contact, to the point that I had to specifically walk up to them every time I wanted something (and they were often in the kitchen, and not actually around, in the lounge).

On some level, this appears to just be cultural. Some time back, an OMAAT reader left the following comment on about my Korean Air service observations, which I think explains a lot:

As a Korean myself, I confirm Korean service is meant to be reactive, never proactive. That’s why we have call buttons at restaurants in Korea. Whenever you need something, you press the button, then the staff will run to you in seconds. A proactive service is often considered “disturbing” in Korea.

For this reason, when Koreans travel to the US, they often feel disturbed by servers consistently checking in. It is a cultural difference. Korean Air is doing a typical Korean service in this way.

So of course I respect different cultural norms, but I’m sure y’all can appreciate my slight confusion here. It seems like what we’d generally consider to be the best service in the United States (or almost everywhere else in the world, for that matter) is considered to be the worst service in Korea. Or to put it differently, I guess the crews at US airlines that do the bare minimum really don’t provide bad service, but rather, they just provide service geared at Korean passengers.