Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Apps in Korea

We all know the blog posts about the most useful apps to use in Korea. I always looked at them with great interested and kept a mental note of which apps to use when I would actually move to Korea.

However I came to find out that many of the apps I use in Korea are actually not related to specifically Korea alone.

Here are the apps I most frequently use to make my life in Korea just that extra bit easier.


On the left you see my Contact folder. I use both Kakao and Whatsapp very frequently to keep in touch with people. Kakao Talk is one of the most popular chatting applications here in Korea. It is very intuitive and with the free call option it is a very attractive app to use for a poor student like me.

Whatsapp is the what I use to talk with my friends and family in my home country. I think it is important when you live abroad to have quick access to these people and in case of emergency it is important that they can get a hold of you very quickly as well.

The app 1km is one that I have been using on and off for the past 3 years. It is a great way to practise Korean and occasionally meet people from. However, since it is an application comparable to Skout or Tinder you unfortunately need to be able to handle the occasional sexual comment and be very careful who to meet.


The next two apps are mostly for my academic career. The middle one is my school own application. It gives me push notification about sudden schedule changes or important emails and it has a campus map and my student ID card which I can scan to enter the library.

Then in the News folder I have quick access to 6 news websites, two Korean, two English  and two Dutch. Not only is it very important to keep up with the news as an international studies major. It is also important to not live in some sort of vacuum while living abroad. I learned this the hard way when I was totally oblivious to some national and international disasters.

Last but not least here are two of my favorite apps to make sure to not get lost in Korea.

The first one is the Seoul subway app, which tells me how to get from one subway station to another in the fasted way possible. There are many different ones out there. But I like this specific app because it also tells you when the next subway will arrive.

And last but not least is Naver Maps. I know that many foreigners try to use google maps in Korea, however nothing works as well to find a specific address in Korea as Naver Maps. It saved me from getting completely and utterly lost numerous times and I recommend you that this is the first app you download as soon as you touch down in Incheon Airport.

I hope you found this article helpful, now please let me know which apps you most frequently use and why.

Love, Wietske

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