Photo of Cheonggyecheon by Pixabay
Welcome to South Korea! With our smartphones, international travel can be much easier and more helpful. There are many apps that you can use while traveling to Korea, but the UoH team has selected the essential apps that we think are the most useful. Let’s get started.
1. PAPAGO – AI Translator for Translation
Papago is a translation app developed by the Korean company called ‘Naver Corporation’ that supports 13 languages (Korean, English, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified/Traditional), Spanish, French, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, Russian, German and Italian).
Not only foreign travelers but also the Koreans love to use this app because it can translate texts, images, voices, conversation (simultaneously speak in each other’s language when talking one-on-one with a foreigner) and handwritten words. It is pretty accurate, especially in Korean, so we recommend you to definitely download this one while traveling to Korea — whether that is a personal trip or a business trip.
For instance, one of the amazing features of the app is the image recognition feature. You can simply take a photo of a Korean restaurant menu or street sign and it will translate it into your selected language.
By the way, papago means a parrot with language abilities.
*FYI – if your country’s language is not one of the 13, we recommend you to use Google Translation. The Korean language is pretty accurate there too.
2. Naver Map for Searching Locations & Places
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We all know how useful Google Map is when traveling to new places. Koreans love to actively use Google Search, YouTube and many services that Google provides, but Google Map is an exception — it simply does NOT work well in Korea. We will write another post soon to talk about this.
When traveling to Korea, we highly suggest downloading Naver Map. They offer English versions and up-to-date location information along with other features like route, navigation, and public transportation information. Also, you can pin places just like Google Map to make up your own list!
3. Subway Korea for Public Transportation
In Korea, traveling via subway is the easiest and best way to navigate the cities. There are many buses, but they tend to be more complicated and difficult to transfer compared to the subway. Especially in Seoul, one of the cities with the best subway system, you can go pretty much everywhere.
Subway Korea is a must-download free app that supports the English version. You can enjoy real-time transit information, bookmarks for frequently-used routes/stations, and more.
Besides Seoul, this app also offers information on other major cities that have subway lines, like Busan, Daegu, Gwangju, and Daejeon.
4. Kakao T for Taxi Services
Kakao T is a Korean transportation service app. This app is widely used in Korea and the service provides taxi-hailing, designated driver booking, nearby parking space search, real-time traffic information, and more. Maybe you will need to take a taxi on certain occasions, so we recommend you to download this app!
5. Korail Talk for Traveling Outside of Seoul
Korail Talk provides Korail train ticket reservation services in English. Korail (The Korea Railroad Corporation) is the national railway operator in South Korea. You can travel to different provinces of Korea via the railroads.
6. Coupang Eats for Food Delivery
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You know that Korea is big for food delivery. When you travel to Korea, we recommend you to experience a food delivery service that many Koreans enjoy in daily lives. There are many food delivery platforms in Korea, but we would like to recommend one of the newest and easiest food delivery apps named Coupang Eats.
UoH offers a personal assistant program with two types of services. For traveling in Korea, we assist with any type of reservations, rentals, and personal assistance. For shopping, we purchase anything you need and ship it to your home. Feel free to email us at [emailprotected] for a quote and to find out how to proceed!
