Weather in Busan in March
South Korea · 20-year averages, March
Shoulder season. March sits in between. You will get good days and you will lose some. Highs sit at 12.3 °C and the day is short; this is an indoors-with-excursions month, not an outdoors-all-day one.
March ranks 7 of 12 in Busan: past the worst of the year but short of October, which is the month to book if the dates are open.
Rain on 7 days, 3 of them heavy. Enough to need a plan B, not enough to need a plan around it. Layers, and a genuinely waterproof outer — at 12.3 °C the difference between a good day and a miserable one is entirely down to what you are wearing.
What the averages hide
Averages flatten a month, and this one hides a few things: 3 nights fall below freezing. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest March day reached 20 °C and the coldest night fell to -4.2 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 53 mm — roughly 67% of the month's rain in one day.
March is moderately variable: 12 mm in the driest year against 172 mm in the wettest, around an average of 79 mm. Roughly two Marchs in three land near that average, and the third does something else entirely.
Wind is light at 14.2 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity is unremarkable at 72%.
How March sits in the year
The month is on the way up: 3.9 °C warmer than February, and April adds another 4.5 °C. Late in the month feels noticeably different from the start of it, which is worth knowing if the trip is short.
Daylight in March
11.9 hours of daylight, gaining 1.1 hours across the month. That is between Busan's extremes of 14.5 and 9.8 hours, so days are long enough not to constrain the plan.
Sea temperature
The sea sits at about 13.9 °C in March — too cold to swim without a wetsuit. The sea peaks at 26.9 °C in August and bottoms out at 13.9 °C — water lags the air by a month or two, which is why the best swimming often comes after the best weather.
How busy it gets
Quiet. Few other visitors, cheaper rooms, and a real chance some seasonal operators are shut.
Crowd levels are estimated from climate desirability and school-holiday calendars, not from visitor numbers.
March in Busan versus nearby
If Busan is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Daegu is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, the same number of rain days. Gwangju is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, the same number of rain days.
So: March is a compromise. October is 29 points better and is what Busan is actually like at its best — worth moving the trip for if that is possible, and worth adjusting expectations for if it is not.
Every month in Busan
| Month | High °C | Low °C | Rain days | Rain mm | Humidity % | Daylight h | Sea °C | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 6.1 | -0.5 | 4 | 30 | 76 | 10 | 15.1 | 47 |
| February | 8.4 | 1.2 | 5 | 52 | 72 | 10.9 | 13.9 | 48 |
| March | 12.3 | 4.2 | 7 | 79 | 72 | 11.9 | 13.9 | 60 |
| April | 16.8 | 8.9 | 8 | 137 | 75 | 13 | 15 | 71 |
| May | 21.1 | 13.7 | 9 | 144 | 79 | 14 | 17.3 | 80 |
| June | 24.3 | 18.2 | 10 | 175 | 83 | 14.5 | 20.6 | 77 |
| July | 26.9 | 22.4 | 17 | 299 | 89 | 14.3 | 23.9 | 57 |
| August | 28.5 | 24 | 15 | 244 | 85 | 13.5 | 26.9 | 55 |
| September | 25.1 | 19.8 | 11 | 175 | 82 | 12.4 | 25.2 | 75 |
| October | 20.6 | 13.8 | 5 | 75 | 76 | 11.4 | 22.8 | 89 |
| November | 14.7 | 7.5 | 5 | 46 | 75 | 10.4 | 20.2 | 72 |
| December | 8.1 | 1.4 | 4 | 32 | 77 | 9.8 | 17.5 | 48 |
See all twelve months in Busan, or where else to go in March.
Planning the rest of the trip
- Flight time to Busan how long you are actually in the air
- Busan time zone and the difference from home
- Days until your trip count down to the departure date