About

I'm H.I. Kang, and I write practical, verified guides for people travelling to South Korea and for international K-pop fans who need to get something done here — buy a transit card, ship an album home, claim a tax refund, book a concert ticket from abroad.

Why this site exists

I was born in Korea and still live here. But the reason this site exists has more to do with being abroad than being home.

Travelling in other countries, I have been the person stuck at a ticket machine in a language I could not read, holding up the queue and guessing which button ends the transaction. I have paid too much because I did not know there was a cheaper option, and found out afterwards. None of it was serious. All of it was avoidable, and it soured afternoons that should have been good ones.

Korea gets a lot of visitors now, and I would rather they spend that energy on the trip than on working out how a turnstile behaves. So this is the practical stuff: what a thing actually costs this month, which queue you are supposed to be standing in, and what people usually get wrong the first time.

What makes this different from the guide you just read

Most English-language information about Korea is either out of date or written by someone who has never done the thing they are describing. Fares change. Stores close. Refund rules get rewritten. A guide published two years ago will confidently give you a price that no longer exists, and you find out at the counter.

That is not usually carelessness. Nobody re-checks a number once it is published, and residents are often the last to notice a change, because we stop looking at prices we pay automatically.

How I verify what I publish

Every price, fare, deadline and procedure on this site is checked against a primary source before it goes live — the operator's own site, a government page, or the company running the service. Not another blog.

  • Each article ends with a Sources section listing exactly what was checked and when.
  • Figures carry an inline (verified [date]) marker so you can see how fresh they are.
  • If I could not confirm something, I say so rather than guessing.
  • When a reader tells me something is out of date, I check it and update the article.

What I don't do

I don't republish or translate news articles. I don't use photos I don't have the rights to. I don't recommend a service I haven't looked into properly, and where a link earns a commission I say so on the page.

Start here

If you are planning a trip, these four cover the mistakes people make most often.

The full list is on the All Guides page.

Get in touch

Corrections and questions are welcome — they're how the site stays accurate. Reach me at kanghyunin.com@gmail.com, or use the contact page in the menu above.

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