How to travel by sea (ferry / boat / ship) between China and South Korea

I recently took a ferry from China to South Korea and back. Before I left I was looking for information about the different routes. These Q&A's contained some good information:

But not really very much information about the lesser traveled routes. Almost all of the routes go through Seoul (Incheon) so while I was there I got as much information as I could with the purpose of writing a self-answer Q&A when I got back.

I'm back now and my answer is below.

Best Answer

I tried to book a ticket China -> South Korea today.

In my experience, there is no way to buy a ticket in Beijing. I have been to and called different places that are supposed to do it (For example- CTA Ticket Office and Beijing CTA ticket office, both in Jianguomenwai Dajie) and it looks like the service does not exist anymore.

If you plan to go from Tanggu to Incheon, you can directly give a phone call to the company and ask for an English speaker. The phone number of the company is 022 2579 6201. They will ask you to provide all the information needed for the booking (date, class, passport id, name etc). Payments are supposed to be made just before getting on the ferry and so they ask you to be present for departure early. However, I found the prices to be REALLY more expensive than what was expected (1703Yuan, ~ 256USD in August 2017).

So I decided to try to get the Quingdao to Incheon which seems to be the cheapest ticket. The booking is also easy - you can send a private message to them using Facebook (search for Weidongferry reservations), giving all the information needed for the booking.

I never had any answer to my facebook booking. I decided to keep it simple and went to the harbour terminal 4hours before the boarding time. No trouble to get the cheapeast ticket, get "special" discount and upgrade. I only paid 480Yuans (august 2017). The journey take 18hours + 3hours for the boarding procedure so 19hours total.