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Traveling to Korea

Advice

Sylvia Park (parkairtravel@hotmail.com) has many years of experience in the travel business and specialises in Korea and the Far East. At the top end she has assisted in state visits; at the other end she can advise on a humble yogwan where you can maybe get closer to the real Korea. I haven’t myself used Sylvia’s services: my trips to Asia are usually work-related so my in-house travel agents fix things for me.

There’s a great A-to-Z of things Korean over at Lost Seouls - James Creegan’s site for foreign types in Seoul.

Guide books

Insight Guides (affiliated to the Discovery Channel) and Lonely Planet both do good guide books to South Korea. I can’t find a Rough Guide though. If you like your guidebooks to have lots of glossy pictures, the Insight guide is the one to go for, but both are good.

Booking in advance

You used to be able to book (free of charge) an English-speaking tour guide in advance — though booking well in advance. I’ve never been organised enough to do this. The service used to be available through http://english.tour2korea.com/, but I can?t find it on their website any more.

Your UK mobile phone won’t work in Korea. You can, though, cheaply and easily order a Korean mobile phone in advance and pick it up at the airport.

Some posh hotels (eg the Westin Chosun in Seoul) supply you with a local cellphone as part of the deal, so you won’t need to bother with hiring one at the airport. Hiring one at the airport, though, gives you the option of putting your own SIM card into a Korean phone, meaning that you keep your UK number. I tried this though and it didn’t work, so ended up using a Korean SIM card.

If you hire a phone from the Before Babel Brigade you get a translation service with it.

In Seoul:

  • The secret garden at the Changdeok palace was only open on a very restricted basis when I visited and you need to book in advance.
  • The Leeum / Samsung gallery requires booking in advance. http://www.leeum.org/eng/main.asp

When you’re there:

In Seoul

Visit Seoul Selection bookshop (opposite the car park for the Gyeongbokgung palace, and not far from the north end of Insadong - http://www.seoulselection.com/contact_us.html), which has a big selection of English language books on Korea, has a general second-hand book section, sells good coffee and also shows Korean films with English subtitles every Saturday at mid-day (I think). Their monthly Seoul magazine is a useful guide for foreigners as to what’s going on in the capital.

Check out Lee Gun Maan, the designer shop. There’s an outlet at the north end of Insadong, and the main shop is in Hongik. Buy a tie for me.

If you’re going to be there for a while, join the Royal Asiatic Society, Korea branch, which has a lot of interesting activities.

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