At One Place

What airport is ICN?

ICN is
Incheon International Airport
Seoul, South Korea

Why the code is ICN

InChoN, the city it sits in, 48 km west of Seoul.

The airport authority or a contemporaneous record states this directly.

The airport

IATA code
ICN
ICAO code
RKSI
Airport
Incheon International Airport
City
Seoul, South Korea
Opened
2001
Code origin
Documented

Incheon was built on reclaimed land between two islands and consistently ranks at or near the top of global airport service surveys. It has an ice rink, a golf course and a Korean cultural museum airside, all of which exist because a large share of its traffic is transferring and has hours to fill.

Codes people book by mistake

Code What it actually is
GMP Gimpo, Seoul's older and much closer airport, now mostly domestic and short-haul regional.

The other code, RKSI

Every airport has two codes. The three-letter IATA code, ICN, is the one on your boarding pass and your luggage tag, and it is assigned for commercial use. The four-letter ICAO code, RKSI, is the one pilots and controllers use, and it is assigned geographically: the first letter or two identify the region, so every airport in the same part of the world shares a prefix. That is why RKSI looks nothing like ICN.

Common questions

What airport is ICN?
Incheon International Airport, in Seoul, South Korea.
Why is Seoul's airport called ICN?
InChoN, the city it sits in, 48 km west of Seoul.
What is the difference between ICN and RKSI?
ICN is the IATA code, used commercially — tickets, timetables, luggage tags. RKSI is the ICAO code, used operationally by pilots and air traffic control, and assigned geographically by region.
Is ICN the same as GMP?
No. GMP is gimpo, Seoul's older and much closer airport, now mostly domestic and short-haul regional.

Related pages

Sources

  1. OurAirports — OurAirports (Public domain)

How these figures are compiled and checked