A Korean’s Take: Culture, Media & Everyday Life

Korea's festival year starts on a frozen river. In January people pay to sit on the ice in Hwacheon and Pyeongchang and fish through a small round hole, and by the end of March whole hillsides in Gwangyang and Gurye have gone white and yellow with plum and sansuyu blossoms. In between come snow sculptures in Gangwon, Seollal, the first full moon of the lunar year and a strawberry expo that runs for 24 days. This calendar covers January to March 2027. Some dates are firm, some are only planned, and a few festivals haven't announced anything yet, so each row says which it is. The table comes first, then the details month by month. January to March 2027 at a glance Korea festivals and events, January to March 2027 Event (where) 2027 dates Good to know New Year sunrise festivals Homigot, Pohang; Jeongdongjin, Gangneung Dec 31 to Jan 1 at dawn. Homigot runs 2 p.m. on Dec 31 to 9 a.m. on Jan 1 Free Seoul Lantern Festival Cheonggyecheon stream, Seoul Dec 11 to Jan 31, conf...

You come up out of a subway exit in Seoul, open Google Maps, tap the café you saved back home and ask for walking directions. Nothing. At best you get a transit route, with the walking parts drawn as a dotted line and no voice telling you where to turn. Your phone isn't broken. In Korea the apps that actually walk you from the exit to the door are Naver Map and KakaoMap, and the reason Google lags behind is map data and law, not who builds the better app. On my own trips abroad, the local apps and little how-tos were always the slowest thing to pick up, so here's the Naver Map vs Kakao Map rundown I'd want in your shoes: what each one is good at, why Google Maps still falls short in Korea, and how to search when English doesn't find the place. Update, November 13, 2026 Google has now met the government's security conditions. On November 13, Korea's Land Ministry said a review council confirmed that latitude and longitude coordinates for Korean territory have ...

At a lot of popular Seoul restaurants, the first thing that greets you isn't a person. It's a tablet by the door, asking for a phone number so it can ping you when your table's ready. If your number starts with +1 or +44, that little screen can feel like a locked gate. Mostly, it isn't one anymore. Korea's booking apps grew up around Korean phone numbers, and the domestic versions still lean on them, but the past two years opened several doors for visitors who want a restaurant reservation without a Korean phone number. On my own business trips and travels, the unfamiliar "how does this even work here" procedures were always the hardest thing to learn, so this is the guide I'd have wanted: what works without a Korean SIM, what a waitlist actually promises, and what happens to your deposit when plans change. Two words first. Koreans call a booking yeyak (예약) and a waitlist weiting (웨이팅), borrowed straight from English. "Weiting isseoyo?" ...

Say "it's raining" to a Korean around dinnertime and there's a fair chance the next words will be "pajeon and makgeolli." It sounds like a line from a TV drama. People mean it. A popular theory says the sizzle of batter hitting hot oil sounds like rain on a roof, and I won't swear that's true, but I know what happens when I walk past a pajeon place on a rainy evening. The smell of frying oil mixes with the sound of the rain, and my feet just stop. Pajeon is a savory Korean pancake packed with green onions. Makgeolli is Korea's cloudy, slightly sweet rice wine. Together they're the country's unofficial rainy-day dinner, and for me a seafood pajeon with one big bowl of makgeolli is enough to make the gloom of a wet day disappear. So here's why the pairing sticks, what to order, how to drink makgeolli without regretting it, and why hikers leave the bottle for the bottom of the mountain. Why does rain make Koreans want pajeon? Nobody ...

A subway ride in Seoul costs 1,550 won with a transit card. Until October 2023 it was 1,250, and the latest rise came in June 2025. Taxis took a bigger single jump: the flag fall went from 3,800 to 4,800 won in 2023, and it now covers 1.6 km instead of 2. So if you're working out a travel budget from a guide written a few years back, the numbers will look a little too friendly. Not everything is going up, though. KTX tickets got about 10% cheaper on September 1, when Korail absorbed the SRT, and four of Seoul's five big palace sites now let you in free on Wednesdays. Here's what a visitor pays right now, when each price took effect, and what's already being discussed for 2027. Korea travel prices at a glance (November 2026) Adult prices in won, for Seoul unless the row says otherwise. Children and teens pay less on almost everything here. Korea travel prices, checked November 8, 2026 What Adult price Since / note Seoul subway, transit card 지하철 · first 10 km ...

Self-checkout kiosks by the DVD shelves at Buram Library in Nowon. Photo: A Korean's Take Yesterday afternoon I was standing in front of these three machines at Buram Library, my neighborhood library in Junggye-dong, up in Seoul's Nowon district. I still borrow books here on weekends now and then. Scan the card, put the books down, walk out. Nobody at the desk even has to look up. Seoul had 214 public libraries at the end of 2025, by the culture ministry's annual count . Most are run by a district, a few by the city or the education office, and almost all of them are free to walk into. Borrowing is free too, once you have a card. Getting that card is the part visitors find confusing, and the answer to "can foreigners borrow?" comes down to one document. I'll get to that near the end, along with the National Assembly Library and university libraries. Getting a library card There's no single Seoul library card. Each library system issues its own: Nowon...