How do I convert a Char to Int?

That's because num is a Char, i.e. the resulting values are the ascii value of that char.

This will do the trick:

val txt = "82389235"
val numbers = txt.map { it.toString().toInt() }

The map could be further simplified:

map(Character::getNumericValue)

The variable num is of type Char. Calling toInt() on this returns its ASCII code, and that's what you're appending to the list.

If you want to append the numerical value, you can just subtract the ASCII code of 0 from each digit:

numbers.add(num.toInt() - '0'.toInt())

Which is a bit nicer like this:

val zeroAscii = '0'.toInt()
for(num in text) {
    numbers.add(num.toInt() - zeroAscii)
}

This works with a map operation too, so that you don't have to create a MutableList at all:

val zeroAscii = '0'.toInt()
val numbers = text.map { it.toInt() - zeroAscii }

Alternatively, you could convert each character individually to a String, since String.toInt() actually parses the number - this seems a bit wasteful in terms of the objects created though:

numbers.add(num.toString().toInt())

On JVM there is efficient java.lang.Character.getNumericValue() available:

val numbers: List<Int> = "82389235".map(Character::getNumericValue)