My resources for traveling to South Korea ;)
Below is the list of resources I have used to prepare my first trip to South Korea. It is not exhaustive, and I will be updating it as I discover additional ones.
Also, I will not give any advice/guidance on the official paperwork (visas, KETA...) I am not an expert in it and the requirements for each country of origin are different and may change.
So, here we go:
1. Klook and Trazy
These 2 websites (https://www.klook.com and https://www.trazy.com) offer a lot of plans and promotions (from buying local SIM cards to renting hanboks, all sorts of tours and even train tickets. It works well, the customer support is efficient and reactive. I bought my SIM card on Klook (South Korea 4G Prepaid SIM Card from KT to pick up at the airport)
There is a possibility to rent a pocket Wifi, but they need an imprint of the credit card for that, and as I have discovered, not all European visa cards work for that. But so far the phone's 4G works great and you can always activate tethering.
2. Translation Apps
My favorite here is doubtlessly Papago. It supports Korean, Chinese, Japanese and English, and it does recognise and translate the text on a photo (super practical when you need to understand the menu in a restaurant!). The voice recognition is as bad as it is for any other translator app, but typed text is ok.
3. Maps
You probably know that Google is not that much used in South Korea. Their number one search engine is Naver, and thus the best maps are either the Naver one, or the Kakao one (Kakao is the local messenger that offers a lot of other additional paid and free services).
Some sites will advise you to also download subway apps, but I found out that with Kakao Maps or Naver Maps you already have all the buses/subway trains in real time as well as all the suggestions how to get where you want to get.
4. Messenger
You might want to get the messenger Kakao Talk while you are at it, as at the difference of WhatsApp, practically everyone in Korea has it. (WhatsApp works fine and is not prohibited, BTW, if you are planning to use it to call your friends back home).
5. Incheon international airport
Incheon International Airport is tourist friendly - signs, staff and robots are here to guide you to where you need to go. But if you'd rather map everything out for yourself in advance, go to their website (https://www.airport.kr/ap/en/index.do). They have plans of the airport as well as all the different transport options to get from the airport to the city well explained.
6. Public transportation card
The public transportation in South Korea is reallywell organized : you use one single T-money card for any public transportation in any city (T-money card is a plastic card that you can buy at any convenience store. Don't worry - there are sooo many of those, that you will never have any problem finding them. You "charge" the card with money in the convenience stores or in the subway station terminals (those take only cards). You can put there as much money as you need; then, depending on the road you are taking, a certain amount will be taken from your card in the bus/subway.
Careful: in most buses and subways you have to paress the card to the payment terminal as you get in and also as you get out! Otherwise there will be a fee charged automatically, as the system counts your trip as unfinished.
7. Things to do
There is a multitude of blogs/FB groups describing cool things to do in each city. I won't be listing them all. Here is one for Seoul that offers interesting things that I haven't found anywhere else: https://www.myguideseoul.com/things-to-do
8. For K-drama fans
A really cool thing in South Korea is that you can go and visit historical drama film sets! They have something like a dozen of those, one more beautiful that the other. In addition, you can visit places from your favorite modern dramas that are not part of any theme park, if you want. Here is a cool blog that has them mapped out: https://koreandramaland.com/listings/
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Categories: My trip to South Korea