Tips in South Korea

 1. Korea is a mainly cashless country, so they take credit cards at most places except at the Metro where we have to insert cash to upload our T money card

2. You can buy the T money card which is the Transportation card at the convenience store such as 7 eleven or CU. There is a 4000 Won cost per card. And you can load the card at the Metro station.

3. Taxi or Uber here is quite reasonable and for a family of 4, it might make sense to take a taxi for short distances instead of metro as it might cost just a couple dollars cheaper to take the metro since the minimum cost per ride in Metro is 1400 Wom 

4. We just got a jumbo taxi outside Incheon airport and it was less than 100k Won. No early reservation needed.

5. Most of the shops process tax refunds when you present them with your passport during purchase. So far the tax refund I’ve been getting is around a little over 5%. Even medical or beauty treatment gets tax refund, but not for hair services like haircuts, etc.

6. We changed some cash at Myeongdong which supposedly has the best rate. On June 2,2024, it was 1381 Won to 1 USD with no extra charge. The credit card was only giving us 1376.

7. Use Naver maps here and it also shows you how to take metro. Very convenient. But sometimes, it can’t read English name, so you might have to copy Korean name. My google map doesn’t work here but my son’s google map does work, so not sure why. I found out that I needed to update my google map to use it. 

8. Beauty work cost cheaper in Korea and my boys came to Ppeum Global Gangnam for their laser work. They even have tax refund machines at the place. We just walked in but had to wait for 1 hour and 30 minutes for consultation. After 30-45 minutes of consultation, we paid for the treatment and the boys were taken to a different section of the office to wash their face and get numbing cream for Mason as he needs to also get injection to add collagen to his skin to even them out. Since it was Mason’s first time, they let him wait for 30 minutes instead of 20 minutes after applying the numbing cream before they start his laser and injection procedure for his entire face. His treatment for a bit over $400 which probably will cost over $5000 in the US. Anthony’s treatment of pico laser etc is less than $200. But these laser treatments need to be done every few months to maintain.