Stuck on something?
Every article on this site started as a moment when a visitor did not know what to do. This is the full list, and the answer is on the line — you do not have to click. Setting up before you land? The arrival page puts the first-day items in order.
You have just landed
- I am at the airport and do not know how to get into the cityTrain, bus or taxi — which one is right depends on your luggage and the hour.
- My phone has a Korean number but Korean apps still reject meYou do get an 010 number. What you do not get is Korean identity verification, and no tourist product at any price changes that.
- I bought a train ticket and there is no gate to scan it atThere is no gate. Walk to the platform and sit in your seat — that is the whole procedure.
- I do not know what a subway ride or a taxi should costA subway ride starts at ₩1,550 with a card and ₩1,650 without, and that gap repeats on every transfer.
You cannot read what is in front of you
- Every sign is in an alphabet I cannot readHangul is not Chinese characters. Most people can sound out a sign after about ninety minutes.
- I cannot tell what kind of restaurant this is from outsideThe last word on the sign tells you what they cook. Learn six words and you can read the street.
- I do not eat pork, and I cannot read the menuPork and fish stock hide in things that do not look like they contain either. There is also an official list of restaurants that do not use them.
- I do not know what to say when I walk into a shopAbout eight sentences cover almost everything, and one of them is just pointing.
- A dish I did not order just arrived and I do not know if I am paying for itIf the word was 서비스, it is free. The dictionary sense is a discount or a bonus thrown in — not 'service' on a bill.
- I need a pharmacy and every door looks like an officeClinic signs run to a fixed formula — name, specialty, then 의원 or 병원. Korean law bars anyone who is not a licensed medical institution from using those words at all.
- Half the signs end in the same syllable and I do not know why방 just means room. Korea names a business after the room you do the thing in — singing room, sauna room, PC room.
- Everyone is calling each other names the subtitles do not translateOppa, hyung, unnie, noona say who is older and how close you are. Subtitles usually replace them with a name, which loses the whole point.
- The Korean title of When Life Gives You Tangerines looks like it says I was deceivedIt does not. On Jeju, 속다 is a second verb meaning to take pains, and the island's own dictionary glosses 속앗수다 as 'you have worked hard' — the -수다 ending is the polite level there, not a clipped -습니다.
- Someone is speaking to me casually in Korean and I cannot tell if it is friendly or rudeThe national dictionary gives banmal two meanings — closeness, and talking down — so read their age and whether they switched mid-conversation; keep putting 요 on the end of your own sentences either way.
- I typed the street name off the sign into a map and got nothingYou spelled the letters. Korean signs spell the sound — 종로 is Jongno, never Jongro, and the map only knows the sound.
- I found the English page and it told me the wrong priceKorean pages carry a revision date; English ones often do not. Where the two disagree, the Korean one is the live copy.
- The price has one too many zeros and I cannot say it out loudKorean cuts numbers every four digits, not three — cover the last four and read what is left as 만 (man).
- I bought a ticket to a Korean film and there are no subtitles at allThat is normal — Korean cinemas subtitle foreign films, not Korean ones. The archive cinema in Sangam marks its English-subtitled screenings with an E, and admission is free.
- The shop says no refunds, but I read that Korea gives you seven daysBoth are right. The seven days are in the e-commerce Act and attach to buying at a distance — online, by app, by post. Buy it over a counter and there is no statutory cooling-off period, so the sign is the deal. Ask 교환 되나요? (gyo-hwan doe-na-yo) before you pay.
- My train pulled in, opened its doors, and has just been sitting thereOn Seoul's Line 9 that is scheduled, not a fault — you are on a 일반 (il-ban) local waiting at a passing station while a 급행 (geup-haeng) express overtakes it on the same track. Getting off is the one bad move: the train you would wait for is the one that just went through.
- The map dropped me on the right road but I cannot find the building numberThe number is a distance, not a serial — multiply it by ten for metres from the start of the road, and odd numbers run down the left-hand side as you walk from that start, even down the right.
- The restaurant is lit and staff are inside, but the door will not openRead the sign, not the room: 준비중 (jun-bi jung) and 브레이크 타임 (break time) are pauses — the break-time notice normally carries its own reopening hour in plain digits — while 금일 휴무 (geum-il hyu-mu) means today is simply over.
- The café toilet is down the corridor and the door has a keypad on itThe code — 비밀번호 (bi-mil-beon-ho) — is printed at the bottom of your receipt or on a card at the counter; inside, 남 is men, 여 is women, the paper goes in the bowl (there is no bin, by decree), and 정지 (jeong-ji) is the bidet's stop button.
- I missed the announcement and cannot tell which station this isRead the glass: since 2023 Seoul has been fixing the station's name to the platform screen doors, sized to be read from a seat through the train window — the screen inside the car describes two stations, the glass only ever one.
- Nobody in Busan uses the polite endings I learned, and I cannot tell if they are annoyedThey are using polite endings — the south-east has its own four-level set, and 오이소 and 없심더 are two of them.
- Two buses pulled up and both of them are greenColour tells you how far a Seoul bus goes, not what it costs — branch buses and village buses are both green, at different fares. The five digits on the pole are the part that settles it.
Something has gone wrong
- I left my bag on the subwayTell a station attendant and hand over the transit card you tapped with — it tells them which train you were on.
- My card paid for dinner but the booking site declined itShop terminals do not run 3D Secure; Korean online checkouts do, and a card that is not enrolled gets refused. One call to your issuer before you fly usually fixes it.
- I need cash and the machine will not take my cardIt is not the English button that decides it — it is whether your card's network logo is on the machine. Check a locator before you fly.
- I am ill and I do not have an appointmentYou do not book anything. Walk into a neighbourhood clinic, wait about twenty minutes, collect your medicine downstairs.
- It is the middle of the night, I feel awful, and every pharmacy is darkA convenience store registered to sell medicine stocks exactly thirteen government-designated products under four Korean headings — 해열진통제 fever and pain, 소화제 digestion, 감기약 a cold, 파스 patches — and you may take one sealed box of each.
- I have broken my glassesWalk into an optician. About ten minutes, no appointment, and no eye doctor needed — the optician does the test.
- I am worried I am being overchargedHere is what ordinary meals actually cost, so you can tell.
You are about to do something that has a rule
- Every guide says buy the 62,000-won Climate Card. Is that still right?No — Seoul stops topping it up on 31 August 2026, the last ride is 29 September, and the scheme ends 1 October. The 1-to-7-day version survives.
- There are eight Olive Youngs in Myeong-dong. Which one do I walk into?Not the biggest one. Olive Young Myeongdong Town is the furthest from the subway and the only one of the six that cannot hand your tax refund back at the till.
- Can I get fined for walking down a street and taking a photographIn one lane of Bukchon, yes — ₩100,000, outside 10:00–17:00, and it applies to visitors exactly as to Koreans.
- I heard hanbok gets you in free — what counts as hanbokIt does, at every palace. There are rules about what counts, and rental shops do not always tell you them.
- I came for the Secret Garden and could not get inIt is a separate ticket and a separate booking — and a timed tour whose schedule depends on your language. English runs 3–4 times a day; Japanese and Chinese, once a day on three days a week.
- There are five palaces and I have one dayThey are not interchangeable. One of the five things on most lists is not a palace at all.
- Someone asked how old I am in Korean ageKorea changed to international age in June 2023. The answer is now just your age.
- Am I paying for something that is free for meIf you are 18 or under, or 65 or over, the royal palaces are free for foreign visitors too — and nobody tells you at the gate.
- It is raining and I wanted to walk along the streamCheonggyecheon runs below street level and closes on a published rainfall schedule. The spot your instinct picks — under a bridge — is where the sluice gates open.
- I want to see my favourite group in Seoul but I cannot get near a ticketSpeed is not the wall. The presale is a fanclub membership list, and the joining deadline can fall on the day the show is announced.
- I have a ticket for a Seoul concert and cannot tell where the venue actually isFive of the main rooms sit inside one park and three of them have been renamed, so the old name and the new name are the same building; the arena taking the biggest tours is not in Seoul at all, but on the island next to Incheon Airport.
- I want to be in the audience at a K-pop music show and cannot tell if I qualifyMusic Bank books two seats at once and both people must arrive; Inkigayo's rules are locked inside an image.
- Everyone tells me to go to Seongsu and I do not know which station that meansSeongsu Station for the shoe street, two minutes away. Seoul Forest Station for the park and the cafe strip — from Seongsu Station the park is a 38-minute walk.
- I want to go up N Seoul Tower tonight — how late can I turn up?Last admission is 30 minutes before closing: 22:00 on a weekday, 22:30 at weekends. The tower stays lit and busy after that, which is why people miss it.
- I found the Lovely Runner spots in Suwon but cannot tell what needs a ticketThe fortress wall is free and never closes; only the palace inside it charges — ₩2,000, with last entry at 17:00, an hour before it shuts.
- I am well over 19 — why is the bar door still demanding my passport?The fine for serving a minor — up to ₩20,000,000 — lands on the venue, and the law lets a door refuse anyone who shows nothing; the age itself runs by birth year, so in 2026 anyone born 2007 or earlier may buy.
- I want to go to the Busan film festival but the English site tells me nothing about ticketsIt is not you — the English booking page is a placeholder image, and no 2026 date has been announced in either language; last year the window opened only 12 days before the festival, and every seat sells online.
- The shop had a TAX FREE sticker and I paid the full price anywayAsk at the till with your passport in your hand. Under ₩1,000,000 the tax can come off there and then; above that the receipt has to go to a downtown booth or the airport.
- I am buying albums to support my favourite group — does buying them here count?Only if that till is on Hanteo's published family list: it is per branch, and four Olive Youngs are on it.
- I am at the BTS bus stop in Jumunjin and want the bus back to Gangneung StationThe 300-1 and 300-2 that come do not stop at the station — get off at 용지각 (Yongjigak) and walk about 830 m, or catch the three-a-day 300-1(강릉역), whose last run leaves the beach end at 17:05.
- I got up at four for the Jeju sunrise and the gate was lockedSeongsan Ilchulbong closes on the first Monday of every month. In September the gate opens at 05:00 and the sun is up by about 06:06.
- I booked the Nami Island coach and now I am not sure how long I actually get thereThe one Seoul coach leaves the island at 16:30, but the boats run to 21:00 and the last Gapyeong train that reaches Seoul is 23:11.
55 of these so far, and the list is how we choose what to write next. Got stuck on something that is not here? Tell us — that is where the next one comes from.